Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

            The Chief Executive introduced the Medium Term Financial Strategy – Forecast 2020/21 – 2022/23 report which provided a detailed overview of the financial forecast, together with a high level forecast up to 2022/23.  The report had been presented to Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 11^th April.

            Following the County Council meeting on 19^th February 2019 detailed work had been undertaken to refine the forecasts to reflect more updated information based on current intelligence.  The high level projection, based on known issues and excluding national funding scenarios, showed that the potential budget gap had risen to £13.3m for 2020/21.  A summary of the forecast and the changes to the position to that previously reported was outlined in the report.

            The Corporate Finance Manager explained that the overall resources available to the Council before any changes in Aggregate External Finance and Council Tax was £271.350m.  The updated forecast and the revised budget gap was detailed in Table 1 of the report.

            The report provided full details of the pressures relating to Schools and Education, which related to three main areas of Additional Learning Needs, Demography and Youth Justice, which had emerged since the report to County Council.

            The Chief Executive added that the work the Council’s cross-party working group would need to focus on centred on the evidence-based case for increased national funding consisting of three main building blocks: 

1.    Inflation protection against core costs;

2.    High cost service pressures, e.g. Additional Learning Needs and Looked After Children; and

3.    Re-raising the case that Welsh Government (WG) should properly fund the cost of implementing its own legislation.

In relation to WG funding its own initiatives, the Chief Executive particularly referred to the recent Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act from January 2019 which required local authorities to operate a SuDS Approving Body (SAB) to deal with surface water drainage matters relating to new developments and ensure compliance with new WG mandatory national standards.  The implications for the costs were being worked through.

All Members concurred with the views of the Chief Executive, particularly that local authorities should not be expected to fund new WG legislation and that any new legislation should be funded directly by WG.  The Chief Executive reiterated previous advice that had been given, that there were no further safe options for the Council to consider beyond the statutory provisions.

RESOLVED:

That the updated forecast be adopted as the basis for initial planning.