The chair invited the board to discuss the report detailing the Financial Strategy Work Programme and consider the recommendations contained within.

 

The board acknowledged that the new administration and changing economic landscape would necessitate a flexible response to existing and emerging plans.

 

The board recognised that the new administration had inherited a budget and a four year medium term financial strategy (MTFS) and that the board would expect the administration to add to and tweak those as necessary, along with other budgeting documents.

 

It was noted that the MTFS was a four year document and that at least three years of it would be relevant to the context in which the budget was going to be developed and set. It was a good document to look at early on in the board’s work programme as it took a longitudinal view extending out several years.

 

The board noted the table set out at paragraph 9 page 22 in the report and concluded that many of the items detailed were ongoing and should be brought back or adopted as part of any new work programme. It was also noted that the financial strategy report had taken on board some of the comments that were made during the previous board’s review of the budget.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained to members that work was continuing on from the previous committee, but as a new administration the new board was free to set up its own programme and disregard the existing one.

 

The board welcomed the structure of having set briefings in addition to formal meetings. It was also suggested that monthly briefings should be held and be open to all councillors. The importance of frontloading briefings ahead of relevant meetings was discussed and the board asked the Head of Strategic Funding (deputy S151) whether it would be necessary to shift any of the briefings to be able to scrutinise more effectively.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance (deputy S151) explained that the next two scheduled briefings would focus on the MTFS and treasury management. It would be possible to work together with the external advisors and the Statutory Scrutiny Officer to ensure relevant briefings were held in advance of items to be scrutinised, this would be particularly helpful in relation to the capital investment programme and the items on the December agenda.

 

It was confirmed that the treasury management training session for members on 31 July was still going ahead and would provide a general overview on the subject, this would then be followed by another meeting in September 2023, which could be tailored to suit any specific requirements of the scrutiny board.

 

The board asked if there was a timeframe in relation to Councillor Stoddart reviewing the capital investment programme.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance (deputy S151) suggested that a timeframe would be confirmed by Councillor Stoddart and that no action would be taken before a briefing had taken place regarding any changes and recommendations resulting from the review.

 

The board discussed timelines around the budget process for 2024/25 and suggested that if details of the capital investment programme were still being finalised by 21 November then it would potentially need to move meetings and briefings around this. 

 

The board enquired how it would scrutinise proposed commissioned services before they came to the board as a fait accompli.

 

The chair suggested that the board would need to take advice from the finance team about timeframes for the budgeting process this year. It was noted that last year the board had wanted to take a look at the budget in an earlier stage of its development than its final state, but the relative lateness of the financial settlement from central government had left too many uncertainties to be able to tie the budget down.

 

The chair stated it would be helpful for other scrutiny committees to relay information to the scrutiny management board about priority services in their respective areas, highlighting the potential implications of budgetary decisions on these services.

 

The board asked if there was an earlier point in the process, maybe when looking at saving options, where the board could be involved.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance (deputy S151) stated it was something that could be considered, but the timeframe was challenging. The settlement was typically received very late in December leaving little time to finalise the draft budget presentation for early January. However, the finance team would work with the board and look into what input the board could have as the finance team moves through the timetable in the autumn.

 

The board discussed the purpose and structure of briefings, meetings and the remit of the board itself.

 

The chair explained that briefings were there to help build capacity as a committee and essentially provided training/information for public-facing meetings. The importance of putting the cart and horse in the right order was emphasised. Regarding the remit of the board, the chair pointed out that the committee’s remit was published on the council website and covered: finance, council budgeting, scrutiny of the council’s corporate services, cross-cutting themes that didn’t sit easily on other committees, external communication and public engagement in promoting understanding of the scrutiny process. It was also noted that in areas where there was potential overlap between committees the board would determine which committee would lead on an activity.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer pointed out that financial strategy could be quite a daunting topic for a new committee. There were various ways to approach the subject and without proper planning there was a risk of setting off on ineffective courses of action.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained that the election earlier in the year had somewhat curtailed the board’s potential to engage in the current financial cycle, but that it was helpful to think of this as the beginning of a four year programme rather than a one year programme. Newer members were given an assurance that priorities would begin to emerge and become clearer once they were provided with training on and became more familiar with the MTFS and other areas of finance.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer stated that member briefings would be open to and accessible to all members, regardless of which committees or boards they were sitting on.

 

The board highlighted the importance of discussing and implementing the public consultation for the budget as swiftly as possible, the historic struggle to get the public to engage was noted and it was hoped this could be addressed in future.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance (deputy S151) explained that discussion with external consultancy support, regarding proposals for the public consultation, were already taking place and it was hoped that a paper on this might be available in time for the September meeting.

 

The board discussed the importance of getting briefing and meeting items on the MTFS right and suggested that members would potentially need to manage expectations of outputs from the August briefings.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer pointed out that there were a number of highly relevant documents relating to finance scrutiny on the board’s Teams area and these would provide members with an excellent foundation to start looking into the subject.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance (deputy S151) explained that in terms of the MTFS briefing in August, the timing wouldn’t allow the board to scrutinise the proposed MTFS for the forthcoming four years, but it would provide an opportunity for members to consider the approach rather than the details, such as: how does the team consider the assumptions, what external advice does it make use of and how risk scenarios were considered.

 

The board requested that reports be written and briefings be delivered using plain English and layman’s terms.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer echoed this request and directed members towards the board’s MS Teams spaces, where jargon-busting glossaries for the health, care and wellbeing scrutiny committee (HCWSC) and children and young people scrutiny committee (CYPSC) were available.

 

The board discussed the scheduled November item on ‘closer working with parish councils’. The chair noted that there had been increased and fruitful engagement with parish councils over the last four years and that initiatives such as the Lengthsman scheme had enabled access to funding for parishes to undertake work locally.

 

Early dialogue and engagement had been working and there was potential for the city, market towns and rural parishes to discuss opportunities for closer working and shared service provisions.

 

The board felt it might be useful to discuss funding opportunities that might be available to town councils from the county, to help them design and shape their budgets for 2024/25.

 

The board noted that the previous leader’s monthly newsletter had been warmly received by parish councils. The chair believed that the current leader was intending to send out a similar style of letter going forward.

 

A discussion took place in relation to extending the number of paragraphs included in recommendation ‘c’ of the report.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer felt that the suggestion to refer to additional paragraphs (to also include paragraphs 10 and 11) to emphasise the importance of acknowledging the environment and community, when budgeting, would be recursive.

 

The board decided that the environment and community were implicitly included through the inclusion of the term ‘strategic objectives’ as detailed in paragraph 8a and 8b of the report. It was also noted that there was a separate section for the environment in all decision reports.

 

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer pointed out that that the environment and community were two of the three strands of the County Plan and the shaping of this would be something the board would be looking at as part of its work.

 

The board discussed Talk Parish and concluded that it may be necessary for a discussion to take place with Talk Parish to ensure that all parish clerks were filtering through communications to their relevant councils.

 

The board identified as a significant problem, the council’s potential inability to generate the income needed to cover the challenges it was facing. This was partly due to economies of scale, the economic climate and its locality to the Welsh border, which often made cross-county working problematic because neighbouring authorities were involved in other arrangements and agreements.

 

The chair suggested that this could potentially fall within the devolution agenda, whereby the government had been pressing/encouraging local authorities to commit to various devolution deals to open up funding schemes and was possibly something that could be picked up under the agenda programme.

 

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY:

The board unanimously approved the recommendations included in the report:

That:

a)    Scrutiny Management Board considers the work programme for scrutinising financial strategy and budget setting;

b)    approves the work programme subject to any amendments it requires;

c)    identifies topics of focus for the committee’s work as listed in paragraphs 7 and 8 of this report; and

d)    further identifies training or topic briefing required to support their work.