To consider the submitted report on the latest position in respect of the Council’s Capital and Revenue Budgets for 2020/2021.

The Board considered and noted the budget monitoring report which provided a high level budget summary of the Council’s forecasted revenue and capital income and expenditure for the financial year 2020/2021.  It was based on the figures as at the end of Quarter 3. 

The Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Cowell, advised that the non-collection of business rates and Council Tax continued to be a pressure and that the recovery of this would be spread over the next three years as agreed by the Government, but that there was still a need to be prudent with a Covid-19 Reserve to be used to respond to additional pressures that may arise depending on how the pandemic develops.  He acknowledged the positive work of medical practitioners and volunteers in Torbay who were working to ensure that people are vaccinated as quickly as possible.

The Board asked a number of questions in respect of the following:

·         the variance in the Children’s Services budget – this was as a result of reducing the number of residential placements and turnaround in staff recruitment, retention and agency staff with some additional costs arising from school transport and the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and investment in fostering, the Social Worker Academy and Special Educational Needs (SEN) Services;

·         concern in respect of communications to residents who had taken advantage of Council Tax payment holidays and how and when this would be paid back and what lessons could be learned for future schemes – Members were informed of the processes undertaken and the Deputy Leader of the Council expressed his regret for any anxiety residents had experienced as a result and gave assurance that the Council would not be pursuing residents through the Courts and would find ways of working with them to meet any shortfall and signpost to available financial support;

·         Government grant funding and how this was being allocated and how much related to the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 tax years, this included automating processes to make it easier to pay businesses for subsequent grants without the need for them to reapply provided that the criteria remained consistent;

·         the total impact of the Revenue Budget needing to include £2.2m which was the difference in Covid-19 spend compared to Government Funding (it was agreed that the report to the Cabinet would be amended to reflect this);

·         impact of the current and future revenue and capital budgets as a result of the removal of the Investment Fund following the announcement that the Public Loan Works Board would no longer fund investments to generate yield;

·         how the Government Grants were allocated and if more details could be provided to Members in the future;

·         economic impact of Covid-19 and what the Council was doing to address this;

·         collection of the additional Council Tax premium for those properties who had been empty for more than 10 years;

·         extra spending on climate change and opportunities to invest in cleaner and greener vehicle fleet; and

·         Capital Plan scheme costs.