Agenda item

Please find attached the draft Budget report for 2023/24 for consideration and comment.

Appendix 2 and 3 will follow shortly.

The Finance Portfolio Holder, Councillor Philip introduced the draft budget report for 2023/24. He noted that this had gone to Cabinet in December, with a final report still to come. The full report included revenue and capital proposals for both the General Fund and Housing Revenue Account as well as a schedule of suggested Fees and Charges for the forthcoming financial year. An updated Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP) covering the financial years 2023/24 through to 2027/28 was also included, which reflected both the impact of the draft Budget proposals as well as the latest available intelligence at the time.

The Cabinet had been advised by the Section 151 Officer at the December meeting that – as required by law – a balanced revenue position (eliminating a previously identified projected deficit of £4.126 million) had provisionally been reached for 2023/24 and that the medium-term financial position, although having a similar profile, had some differences compared to the position presented on 10^th October 2022 (and subsequently to this Committee on 24th November 2022), with a particular challenge still anticipated in 2024/25 and 2025/26 as a consequence of the forthcoming new Waste Management Contract. However, some significant uncertainties remained.

The provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2023/24 was eventually released just before Christmas 2022; the outcome for Epping Forest District Council was generally as expected and provided further assurance as to the underlying financial sustainability of the draft Budget proposals as currently presented.

The Committee noted the savings from vacant posts and the avoidance of redundancy costs, but it may also result in having no staff in roles that were hard to fill. Would we fill these internally or keep them vacant indefinitely. Councillor Philip noted that all savings were appropriate to the area where they came from, and they had been considered by the appropriate cabinet member. They were looking at essential posts that could be cut without affecting services.

The committee asked if the council was overstaffed before this. Councillor Philip there may have been some posts in the establishment that, if we had the same financial pressure as we do now, maybe should not have been there. But, we did not have this financial pressure at the time. As shown here overstaffing might have been in establishment but maybe not in terms in people in seats.

The committee then asked if they were planning to move forward on a more for less basis. Councillor Philip said that was a strange way to phrase it, people were generally working as hard and as smart as they could, but there were always efficiencies that we could put in place. We need to make sure that what we do in the future was better than what we did this time. We can always find things that we could do better and we must keep doing this year on year.

The committee wanted to know how many less staff were we looking at next year. They were told that it was a relatively small number, the age profile of the council was at a higher level and people would retire. They would like to avoid all redundancies, but suspected that they could not. We would be looking for voluntary redundancies but that may not be the case. Currently there were 18 roles involved in the overall budget package, with up to 48 staff involved in the consultation exercise. The loss of staff will be much smaller than that and mostly voluntary.

The committee asked about the Master Planning budget which was a big saving and would like to understand a bit more about this £101k saving represented in practice.  The council was also looking to the volunteer sector to pick up some slack, but we had cut that budget as well.  And to what extent did we look at opportunities for income generation in the community programmes instead of just shutting them down. They were told that the Master Planning was complete at present but officer would have to detail the reasons. As for the community programmes it was clear it was not just about reductions in spending but also about revenue generation. As for grants we needed to decide if we would continue with them or lose a member of staff. It was not ideal, but it was where we were. It was also about driving better value from these organisations.

Asked if we were sharing services with other local authorities and if there were any examples the committee was told that there was nothing in this particular year that was deliverable. However, we do work with other organisations, and we were still looking for anything that could help us.

The committee wanted to know why there was a saving of £23,500 on planned maintenance, if this was planned, why do this; or did everything just move on to the next year.  Councillor Holly Whitbread answered that some things would be postponed but the priority work would be done. There should be no big delays. We will do things when they need to be done and not just work to a schedule. We also had regular contact with our residents and carried out regular consultation exercises.

Resolved:

The Committee considered the Cabinet’s draft Budget proposals for 2023/24 as set out and made such comments and/or recommendations as the Committee felt appropriate to assist the Cabinet in further considering the Budget on 6th February 2023.