Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

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Youtube playlist of Cabinet meeting of 10th October 2013

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

                               

Continues from Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013.

FINANCE
4. Statement of Accounts 2012/13 8:26 | Cabinet report | Statement of Accounts 2012/13

Cllr Phil Davies said, “OK so that takes us on now to item four, the err Statement of Accounts for 2012/13.

Errm, again, errm this err, I think these Statement of Accounts have been to Audit and Risk Management Committee, err err, but the thing that err again I want to draw your attention to is in paragraph 2.10, clearly this is a report that relates to 12/13, the statement of accounts relates to 12/13, err when we had a number of errm pretty err you know big challenges err on errm to you know address. Not least errm a £17 million overspend from the previous administration errm which you know which was a huge challenge and again I think it reflects the distance that we’ve travelled, that we’ve addressed that and later in the financial monitoring report we’re actually reporting an underspend now in the first few months of this year which is err great.

Errm but I think the the the paragraph 2.10, errm Grant Thornton err recognise the progress made by the Council during 12/13 with the direction of travel being rated as amber, errm so I think that’s, err we’re not out of the woods yet by any means, but I think that’s encouraging errm external validation if you like of the progress that we’ve made, so I think that’s very welcome.

So I don’t really want to say much more than that except to say that we’re err being asked to note the Statement of Accounts err and the audit report by Grant Thornton and that errm at 12.2 progress on delivering the actions identified in the audit findings report will be monitored by Audit and Risk Management Committee. So can we agree those recommendations?”

Cabinet: “Agreed”

Cllr Phil Davies: “OK, very good thank you.”

Ed – although Cllr Phil Davies refers to a £17 million overspend which he blames on the previous Conservative/Lib Dem administration, this wasn’t an overspend but a projected overspend of £17 million, which after a spending freeze reduced to £4.7 million. The Labour Cabinet in October 2012, after the projected overspend of £17 million was known, agreed to extra spending (beyond what was in the 2012/13 budget) of £700,000.

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Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Wirral Council) 26th March 2013 Part 1 Spending Freeze, Overspends and Bad Debts

A report on the Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting (Wirral Council) of the 26th March 2013

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The agenda and reports for this meeting can be found on Wirral Council’s website and this blog post includes video of the meeting.

penguin with whipThe Chair welcomed everybody to the meeting, after a short discussion about filming he asked for any declarations of interest or party whip. No declarations of interest or party whip were made. The minutes of the meetings held on the 14th February 2013 and on the 30th January were agreed.

icicle Peter Timmins introduced the month 10 report on the overspend. He started by saying that they’d added £1 million to the budget of Adult Social Services, increasing the original overspend from £17 million to £18 million, however due to the spending freeze the overspend was down to just over £7 million, but that the month eleven report was just about to go to the Chief Officer’s Group which would add a further £200,000 reduction to the overspend.

Part 3 (page 9) of the report detailed the risks of overspends in adult and children’s social care and how they were in talks with Cheshire West and Chester Council about shared services. He felt they could do more on procurement to generate savings and clamp down on “rogue purchasing”.

sheep Cllr Gilchrist asked when the report on bad debts would be reported? Peter Timmins said it was going to a Special Cabinet meeting on the April 18th and that it had led to some interesting discoveries about the Pension Fund. He said they were looking at the processes involved.

Cllr Gilchrist asked about the changes in month ten compared to month nine. Peter Timmins said he would give Cllr Gilchrist the budget book which showed three years budgets which he hoped to have ready by the middle of April as it was now in draft form. They had also done a budget training session for councillors and planned to do more of these and were also training officers in budget management with aids to budget management put on their website. He described sending officers to budget management training courses using the metaphor of sending sheep to be dipped.

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 24th January 2012 Financial Monitoring (Revenue Overspend), SIGOMA report and Come Together campaign/petition Part 1

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 24th January 2013 Agenda items 1-4, Declarations of Interest, Minutes, Leaders Announcements and Financial Monitoring (Revenue), SIGOMA report and Come Together campaign

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Present:
Cllr Phil Davies
Cllr Tony Smith
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Harry Smith
Cllr Brian Kenny
Cllr Pat Hackett
Cllr Chris Jones
Cllr Chris Meaden
Cllr George Davies
Cllr Ann McLachlan

Cllr Phil Davies welcomed people present and commented that the meeting was less noisy than the previous Cabinet meeting. He welcome Joe Blott, the new Strategic Director for Transformation and Resources. No declarations of interest were made.

The minutes of the meeting held on 20th December 2012 were agreed.

Cllr Phil Davies said they’d take agenda item 3 (response to alcohol consultation) as an item of Any Other Business as they needed to agree their response to the consultation in time to meet the deadline, so the first main item was Financial Monitoring – Revenue (this is the original report), which was the subject of a revised report in the supplementary agenda.

Cllr Phil Davies asked Peter Timmins to introduce the report. Peter Timmins said that the position on the overspend had improved by a £million, he referred councillors to 2.15 on page 7, talked about the earmarked reserves and referred to table 6 at 3.2 on page 10. He said that the underlying problems had been masked by one-off solutions this year.

Cllr Davies thanked Mr. Timmins for the report and said he wanted to make a few comments. He said it was pleasing to see the overspend this year down, however he said they still had additional pressures such as the bad debts issue in Adult Social Services which there would be a verbal report on later and the Social Services care home fees consultation.

He said they were waiting for a “clear steer from government” in response to the meeting they [the three party leaders] had with the Minister a few weeks ago about flexibility about capitalisation and the way the levies operate. There would be a further meeting with civil servants on Tuesday [29th January] and that they were working hard on the budget options consultation which would end at the end of the month. Following the consultation there would be a report to the Cabinet meeting of the 18th February (where they would also decide on a new three-year Corporate Plan).

Cllr Davies said he wanted to add to the recommendations (which are below):

Add the following to the recommendations in the report:-

1. Cabinet believes that the Government’s austerity policy is proving to be profoundly unfair. Authorities with the highest levels of poverty and deprivation are facing the biggest cuts. At the same time, wealthy areas with the lowest levels of poverty pay less.

2. Wirral is losing £151 per head in cuts. Liverpool is losing £252, Manchester is losing £209, Newcastle is losing £162, Birmingham is losing £166, and Sheffield is losing £140 per head.

3. Milton Keynes is losing just £38 per head. Central Bedfordshire is losing £18 per head. And people in North Dorset are losing just £2 per head.

4. Cabinet also notes that a recent report by SIGOMA (Special Interest Group of Metropolitan Authorities Outside London) indicates that out of the 47 SIGOMA authorities Wirral has had the largest cut in its funding from central government (2.62% cut in revenue spending power 2013-14). This compares with the SIGOMA average of -1.78% and the average for Shire Districts of -1.37%.

5. Cabinet supports the ‘Come Together’ Campaign launched by the Mayor of Liverpool on the 18th January when the Leaders of Core Cities, Merseyside Districts and Faith Leaders met to discuss the impact of the Government’s austerity policy.

6. Cabinet supports the on-line petition which has been launched at www.come-together.co.uk. This calls on the Government to urgently re-think its policy and to apply the cuts more fairly across the country, protecting those most in need, and making sure those in wealthy parts of the country pay their fair share. We urge all residents to sign this petition.

This was seconded by Cllr McLachlan and agreed by the Cabinet.