Agenda and minutes

Councillor Erbil welcomed all attendees to the meeting.

Apologies for absence had been received from Councillor Lappage (Councillor Taylor was substituting for her), also from Councillor Nneka Keazor, Bindi Nagra and Stuart Lines.

Members of the Council are invited to identify any disclosable pecuniary, other pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests relevant to the items on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest.

Enfield’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee has set up a Budget Meeting to consider the proposals within the Council’s 2020/21 Budget Consultation.

The purpose of the Committee Meeting is to:

a)    Seek comments on and consider the Budget Consultation proposals,

b)    To prepare a response on the Budget Consultation proposals for consideration by Cabinet and Council as part of the budget setting process.

Members of the Committee are asked to note:

·         The public have been invited to attend the meeting to participate in the budget consultation process;

·         That Cabinet is due to consider the response from the budget consultation process at its meeting on 12 February 2020. The final response agreed by the Committee will be referred onto Cabinet for consideration as part of this process. The Council’s final 2020/21 budget proposals are due to be considered and approved at the Council meeting on 26 February 2020.

The Chair outlined the structure and process for the update and budget consultation. Overview and Scrutiny Committee would provide comments to feed in to the final report to Cabinet and Council in February.

Councillor Maguire introduced this item and spoke of the legal requirement to set a realistic and achievable budget. She spoke of the substantial Government cuts to local authorities since 2010, with a £178m gap for Enfield since 2010 and an additional £18m for this year.  The government approach for providing one- off grant funding had not helped the council in their plans to provide a sustainable budget. She said our priorities were to help the most vulnerable. We would be looking to increase Council tax in line with the Government’s referendum threshold of 1.99% and collect a 2.00% precept to cover the rising costs of Adult Social Care.

At present £1.5m of reserves are being used on a one- off basis to address the outstanding funding gap.  There is ongoing work to identify further savings and income generation proposals to close this gap.

It was essential that we have a sustainable budget to protect our most vulnerable residents under Adult Social Care and Children’s Services areas.

Councillor Caliskan endorsed Councillor Maguires comments and said this was a fair budget given the circumstances of a difficult situation.  We were facing challenges and were rightly placing an emphasis on the vulnerable, we were also investing in our young people. As custodians of the borough we are looking at the long term to ensure the budget is sustainable.

Fay Hammond (Executive Director, Resources) and Matt Bowmer (Interim Director of Finance) gave a presentation on the 2020/21 to 2024/25 Medium Term Financial plan (MTFP) they spoke of the need to have a resilient budget and highlighted the following:

• The need to deliver on our priorities and Corporate Plan and protect those most in need
• Adult Social Care and Children’s Social Care budgets to increase by £6.6m and £3.9m respectively.  This includes funding for intervention of £385k (Edge of Care - this programme has already been shown to be successful.)
• It is a long- term budget to ensure decisions are sustainable. We are matching need, for example in the provision of additional social workers.
• The Ten-Year Capital Programme and financing would go to Cabinet January /February 2020.
• We can evidence that our budgets are becoming more resilient – our overspends are reducing and we have a reduced reliance on Capital Receipts.
• In previous years savings put forward have sometimes been overly ambitious. For this year a much smaller area of savings are at risk - as we have worked towards a more resilient budget.
• Relatively stable reserves level maintained over last five years.  The budget is in a resilient place
• There are increased demographic pressures with additional numbers of children in need and an increase in the number of referrals. For example, last year 835 children reliant on SEND transport – and for this year - 960 children. 
• Adult Social Care and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 403.

To agree the minutes of the meetings held on the 30 October 2019,

7 November 2019, 14 November 2019and 21 November 2019.

Business meetings of OSC –

Thursday 13 February 2020

Thursday 2 April 2020

Provisional Call-In dates

Thursday 30 January 2020

Thursday 6 February 2020

Wednesday 4 March 2020

Thursday 26 March 2020

Tuesday 28 April 2020

Business meetings OSC–

Thursday 30 January 2020, Thursday 13 February 2020 and Thursday 2 April 2020

Provisional Call-In dates –

Thursday 30 January 2020, Thursday 6 February 2020, Wednesday 4 March 2020, Thursday 26 March 2020, Tuesday 28 April 2020

The Associate Cabinet Members (ACM’s) would not be attending the OSC Committee on 30 January 2020. The Leader would attend to discuss council priorities. 

NOTED

OSC Members disappointment that ACM’s would not attend.

Councillor Erbil thanked everyone for attending the meeting.