Issue - meetings

This report sets out the 2025/26 revenue and capital budgets for this Committee to consider and recommend for submission to the Policy and Finance Committee on 13 February 2025.

          (Councillor Jacky Pendleton arrived at the meeting at 18:05pm)

          The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer presented the committee’s revenue and capital budgets for inclusion in the council’s 2025/26 budget which the committee was being asked to approve. He confirmed that the figures had been summarised in Appendices A & B which were attached to the report and that there was an additional recommendation for members to consider which was to grant delegation to the council’s Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer authority to extend the finances systems contract for a further 5 years, the detail for this had been detailed in section 4.8 of the report.

          The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer explained the key changes and confirmed that the revenue budget showed a net increase of £820k from 2024/25 and the reasons had been outlined in sections 4.4. to 4.8 of the report. He then highlighted some of the reasons for the increase explaining that the staffing realignment was due to a departmental restructure within the Finance Group which resulted in an alignment of £211k of staffing costs and the cost to this committee was offset by a corresponding cost reduction to the Housing and Wellbeing Committee. He explained that a recharge to the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) for the costs of certain administrative functions and officer time, had been reduced by £177k, that this was a recalibration of budgets across the council rather than an additional cost. Having reviewed the costs to the HRA, it was important to ensure that the costs were fair, legal and stood up to external audit scrutiny. Moving on to contract inflation he advised this was mainly due to the variety of IT contracts the committee had which included maintenance of software, servers, cloud-based back-ups and firewalls. In addressing the cost of £80k detailed at section 4.8 he confirmed that this was for the implementation and upgrade of the existing finance system. He explained that the £70k for security costs at the Civic Centre and Bognor Regis Town Hall, this was an essential service to ensure the safety and wellbeing of staff and visitors, he confirmed that the budget was not included in the 2024/25 base budget, but this was now in the 2025/26 budget. He confirmed the centralisation of training budgets was to ensure that Human Resources had a better way of managing corporate training needs across the council.  Finally, he confirmed that there was one new capital scheme detailed, however he recommended to members that should there be any questions on this, it may be advisable to wait until item 7 on agenda.     

          The Vice-Chair requested a proposer and seconder for the recommendations, the recommendations were proposed by Councillor Bower and seconded by Councillor Turner.

          In opening the debate, the Vice-Chair invited members to ask any questions they had. Councillor Turner was then invited to address the committee where he advised that he had submitted 2 questions in writing in advance of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 518