Agenda item

Members will recall that O & S had requested that Portfolio Holders present their Business Plans at the first meeting of the new O & S Cycle on the 6 June.  As the Business Plans are developed on a Directorate basis, such a presentation would have required some careful choreography.  However, agreement has been reached, that it makes more sense for the Business Plans to be presented to the relevant Select Committee, where there would be better alignment.  This way the Select Committees would have time to undertake a more in-depth scrutiny role regarding the numerous services which make up their Select Committees. 

On this basis, the relevant Portfolio Holders are requested to attend this meeting and take the Select Committee through their plans for the coming year.

The background to this item was that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had requested that the relevant Portfolio Holders attend the first meeting of each Select Committee to present their Business Plans, which were developed on a Directorate basis. This would enable each Committee to undertake a more in-depth scrutiny role regarding the numerous services which made up each Select Committee.

In the absence of Councillor Lion, Councillor Mohindra updated the Committee on the technology and support services side of the business plan that directly affected the Resources Directorate. He noted that facilities management were focusing on customer services and office accommodation and linked transformation projects. Human Resources were now working on their third cohort of corporate apprentices and were recruiting another 9 for the coming year. The MFD installation was now nearly complete and the majority of staff were now using these machines.

As for the financial side of the Resources Directorate Business Plan, he noted that the Council was still financially very strong. The plan indicated that the Statutory Statement of 2016/17 would be ready for publication by 30 September and officers were preparing the 2018/19 budget for adoption by full Council in February.

Councillor Bedford asked about item 7 on the plan, ‘to maximise the collection of Council Tax and Business Rates’ and the 2% not collected. How much was this in monetary terms. Councillor Mohindra noted that the collection was close to 100% once on-going collection of those debts in future years was taken into consideration. Mr Pavey, the Assistant Director Revenues added that the collected revenue for one year would be 99%. 1% would be equal to about £350k for Business Rates and £850k for Council Tax and most of this would be recovered over the following year.  Councillor Kane pointed out that any write offs were always published. Councillor Bedford said that it would be good to let the public know that we did collect almost all of the income owed to us.

Councillor Bedford asking about item 10 of the plan, ‘business case for internal enforcement agents’ asked how this project was going. Mr Pavey said a report was due to go to the Cabinet looking if it was worth doing the work and collecting the fees.

Councillor Bedford went on to item 13, the purchasing of a new generator for the Civic Offices; would this be deferred, considering that we were moving to the use of one building. Councillor Mohindra said he thought this would happen anyway. Councillor Bedford clarified asking if we would need a smaller generator for just this building. Would it be useful to defer this decision to a little later? Councillor Kane said that this was part of a five year maintenance programme. Councillor Mohindra said that Councillor Lion had looked at this and had found that we did need this new generator.

Councillor Bedford then asked about item 20, ‘recruit of new cohort of apprentices’ and wondered if any specific disciplines were being recruited for. He was told that there would be 9 administrative apprentices and 1 construction apprentice.

Councillor Jon Whitehouse noted that there was no mention of business relief in the plan. Mr Pavey said that this was announced in the March budget and would be going to October’s Cabinet. Officers were looking to work out a scheme to cover the next 4 years. He noted that it would be heavily front loaded for the 1^st year, with little for the 4^th year. They were likely to take out multi nationals and chains and target local businesses.

Councillor Kane asked about item 5 ‘undertaking compliance checks’, was the proposed percentages of checks enough or should it be higher. He was told by Councillor Mohindra that a 20 to 30% check was a reasonable percentage.

Councillor Kane then asked about item 6, ‘on line claim forms’ that had a deadline of June 2017. He was told that was due to go live at the end of this month.

Councillor Kane asked the same about item 9, ‘SMS test messaging for payment reminders’. Mr Pavey said that officers hoped to have it in operation by September.

Councillor Kane then asked about item 14, ‘to develop a 2018/2023 ICT Strategy’. He was told that this was out on consultation at present and this was what the June ‘17 date indicated.

On looking at item 17, Councillor Kane asked what ‘Northgate Aspire Mobile Working’ was. He was told that it was about mobile or out of office working.