Agenda and draft minutes

The Vice-Chair in the Chair opened the meeting and welcomed members and officers. He explained that the Chair had given his apologies for this meeting and proposed Councillor Stanley as acting Vice-Chair.  This was seconded by Councillor Yeates and on being put to the vote was approved by the committee.

          An apology for absence had been received from Councillor Lury.

Members and Officers are invited to make any declaration of pecuniary, personal and/or prejudicial interests that they may have in relation to items on this agenda, and are reminded that they should re-declare their interest before consideration of the items or as soon as the interest becomes apparent.

Members and Officers should make their declaration by stating:

a)             the item they have the interest in

b)             whether it is a pecuniary/personal interest and/or prejudicial interest

c)             the nature of the interest

          There were no Declarations of Interest made.

The Committee will be asked to approve as a correct record the Minutes of the Policy and Finance Committee held on 13 February 2025, as attached.   

The minutes from the last meeting of the committee held on 13 February 2025 were approved as a correct record and were signed by the Chair at the conclusion of the meeting.

          The Chair confirmed that there were no urgent items for the committee to consider.

To receive questions from the public (for a period of up to 15 minutes)

          The Chair confirmed that no questions had been submitted for this meeting.

This report provides an update on projects within the Action Plan and an overview of the Council’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for the 2023-2024 financial year. 

The Climate Change and Sustainability Manager presented his report to the committee which was the climate change and sustainability work plan. He explained that the plan had had a name change this year to the ‘Climate Change and Sustainability Work Plan’ as planning were looking to take their own biodiversity action plan forward and it could become confusing to have two documents with similar names.  The committee was advised that this was the third update being presented to members since the plan was adopted back in February 2022 and that this work supported the  2030 carbon neutral target.

          The plan provided an overview on all work that was being undertaken around sustainability, and it addressed all three scopes. The Climate Change and Sustainability Manager then provided an overview of the council’s emissions distribution stating that changes had been made based off constructive feedback received from members about the document last year and that work had progressed to incorporate those comments as outlined below:

·       The re-vamping of the table to make it more cohesive including the progress column to identify more clearly the status of each project;

·       More details had been added to include costings and project timescales, where possible together with the inclusion of a caveat highlighting that this was not always possible for each project, within the introduction narrative

·       Within appendix d an emission table providing additional information on actions with exact emission savings

          The committee was then updated on two key pieces of work. For project 5, which was looking at feasibility work completed and underway, building audits had been completed at the Arun Leisure Centre, the Wave, Bognor Regis Town Hall and the Civic Centre. Heat decarbonisation plans had also recently been completed for the Civic Centre and Bognor Regis Town Hall. This work was also supporting the ongoing accommodation review. Looking at projects 23 to 26, procurement work was looking to incorporate sustainability into the procurement process which would also improve supplier engagement. The Climate Change and Sustainability Manager confirmed that he had been liaising with the council’s suppliers to better understand their position on sustainability and to determine if they could provide Arun specific emissions. Officer guidance and a sustainability charter to assist with this work had been drafted. A big win to highlight was the inclusion of sustainability requirements and KPI reporting in the combined cleansing contract which was the council’s largest source of emissions.

          There were two errors within the report that needed to be explained to members. At Table 1 in appendix A (page 25) employee commuting and leisure centres were showing a % reduction when it should be a % increase. The same table was shown in appendix C (page 93) where there was an error in how this had been copied across so all of the % changes had been shifted up in error. These errors would be corrected.

          In concluding his presentation, the Climate Change and Sustainability Manager confirmed that the Carbon Action Work Plan had been awarded the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 594.

This report is to update the Committee on the Q3 Performance Outturn for the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which make up the Corporate Plan, for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 December 2024.

The Group Head of Organisational Excellence advised that the report detailed the performance results for the Quarter 3 Performance Outturn for the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) covering the period 1 April to 31 December 2024. She confirmed that there were no recommendations from other service committees for this committee to consider but that following the consideration of KPIs by other committees, officers would ensure that for the Quarter 4 reports and future reporting for the new municipal year, it would be clarified within each report what KPIs members should consider within each committee as there had been some confusion over the last cycle of meetings.

          Group Heads from various departments were present in the meeting, some virtually, to assist in responding to questions asked.

          The Chair invited questions from members. The questions asked have been set out below:

·       CP21 (percentage of non-emergency repairs completed within 20 working days) – could the verbal update confirmed in the report be provided. The Group Head of Housing, Wellbeing and Communities highlighted that difficulties were still being experienced with repairs reporting. The operating systems had been integrated at the end of February 2025 to manage this workflow. That integration meant that were was no longer the need to double handle repairs in two separate systems which would enable improvement with onward reporting. This did mean that was a glitch in reporting timelines and at the next meeting of the Housing & Wellbeing Committee taking place on 18 March 2025, the Quarter 3 performance figures would be reported at 71% which would confirm that performance was being actively managed with communications having been sent to all contractors reminding them of their obligations and completion target times.

·       Why do you think that non-emergency repairs performance is getting worse? In response, it was confirmed for the reasons already described in going live with the new system and also linked to the in-sourcing but essentially linked to the validation of the work and the work in progress in terms of the integration of the two systems. The Group Head of Housing, Wellbeing and Communities stated that he was confident that improvement would be seen in Q4 and thereafter.

The committee noted the content of the report.

The purpose of this report is to appraise the Policy & Finance Committee of the Council’s consolidated forecast out-turn against the 2024/25 budgets approved by Full Council at its meeting of the 21 February 2024.  

In the absence of the Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer, the Deputy Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer joined the meeting virtually to present the report which provided the committee with a detailed forecast of the council’s spend against budget for the revenue budget, approved savings, Housing Revenue Account (HRA), and capital programme for 2024/25 at the end of December 2024.  The committee was being asked to consider the report and provide officers with any comments.

The Deputy Finance and Section 151 Officer then worked through the appendix of the report addressing its key highlights. 

Looking at the consolidated revenue budget, there had been an increased net underspend from £165k to £692k for Quarter Q3 for the remainder of the year. The cost of service outturn indicated an improved position of £314k underspend against a budget of £24.8m, an improvement of £478k since the last quarter reported to the committee. This had been made up of some in year savings on salary and professional fees together with an increase in car parking income coupled with a reduction in expenditure. Although this was a positive story, members were reminded that whereas the budget saw a £3.6m contribution from reserves, that had come down by almost £700k, a structural budget deficit remained with a projected £2.9m contribution required from reserves to fund the current year’s General Fund budget. Members were referred to the detailed insights on these variations as set out in appendix A to the report. Turning to the HRA it was positive to report a degree of stabilisation over the last two quarters to a point where the council anticipated that the account would break even to deliver an in year surplus of £500k and if added to the surplus brought forward from last year of £480k, this meant a predicted increased reserve of £1.5 m by the end of next year.

It was reported that in quarter 2, the capital programme had seen significant  realignment of capital budgets as set out on page 121 of the agenda in relation to projects such as the Alexandra Theatre, the Littlehampton Seafront project and the Bognor Regis Arcade. These projects were monitored closely with their underspends being carried over into next year’s budget, with the £3m approved by this committee and council being added to the Alexandra Theatre project. In terms of the HRA capital programme, this had been reprofiled significantly between quarter 2 and quarter 3 with the revised budget forecast sitting at £16.5m. The decarbonisation programme of £3m would require externally matched funding before commencing.

Having thanked the Deputy Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer for the report, the Chair highlighted how pleasing it was to see the progress that was being made with the HRA account.

The Chair then invited questions from members who agreed that it was pleasing to see the improvement reported with the HRA and confirmed figures such as the £4.6m to be spent on sheltered accommodation. On the General Fund  ...  view the full minutes text for item 596.

The report allows the Policy and Finance Committee to consider and comment on the Council’s Capital Strategy 2025/26 to 2029/30 before adoption by Full Council on 19 March 2025.

In the absence of the Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer, the Deputy Finance and Section 151 Officer joined the meeting virtually and presented the draft Capital Strategy 2025/26 to 2029/30 which would be forwarded onto full council to consider in line with the requirement confirmed in the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy Prudential Code.

The committee was advised that the adoption of the capital strategy formed the framework and understanding of the longer-term policy objectives for capital investment decisions and would inform the capital budgets over this period. Members were reminded that the strategy itself was not the decision-making process for the council’s capital programme, but it should align closely with other key council strategies including:

·       Treasury Management Strategy

·       Annual Investment Strategy

·       Housing Revenue Account Business Plan

·       Asset Management Strategy

·       Property Investment Strategy

The strategy had been developed to deliver a capital programme which met the aims of the council’s vision which was based around the four key vision themes. The strategy was a ‘living document’ which would be periodically updated to reflect changing local circumstances and other significant developments. The last update had been presented to this committee on 7 March 2023 and its aim was to drive the authority’s capital investment ambition, ensuring expenditure, financing and treasury management were appropriately aligned and managed to support the corporate plan priorities whilst also enabling sustainable, long-term delivery of services whilst also outlining key objectives and how these would be achieved.

Members’ attention was drawn to the strategy attached as appendix 1 to the report and to:

·       the capital expenditure and financing section where table 1 set out the estimates of capital expenditure up to 2029/30;

·       Table 2 at section 3.2 illustrating capital financing sources;

·       Table 3 at section 3.2.4 illustrating estimates of capital financing requirement

·       Section 4.2 – borrowing and table 4 showing estimates of gross debt and the capital financing requirements and under/over borrowing

·       Section 5 – revenue implications and financing costs

Having had the recommendation proposed by Councillor Stanley and seconded by Councillor Nash

The Council

                    RECOMMEND TO FULL COUNCIL

                    That the Capital Strategy 2025/26 to 2029/30 be adopted.

          The Chair confirmed that there were no recommendations from service committees for this committee to consider.

          The Chair confirmed that there were no updates to be presented to this meeting.

          A request was made by for an update to be provided to the committee following recent meetings attended by the Leader of the Council, especially the Greater Brighton Economic Board and West Sussex Leaders regarding devolution and local government reorganisation. It was queried why an update on devolution and local government reorganisation was not being presented to full council on 19 March 2025.

A rolling committee work programme is attached running up to May 2027 for the committee’s information.

In receiving and noting the committee’s rolling work programme concern was expressed and statements made over the number of service committee meetings that  had recently been cancelled.

          In response, the Committee Services Manager confirmed that the provisional meeting of the committee shceduled for 3 April 2025 would be cancelled as this meeting had been set aside to receive any recommendations from service committees being held on 18 and 20 March 2025. As it had been confirmed that there would be no recommendations for that meeting to consider, it was proposed to cancel that meeting.