Agenda item

(NOTE: Councillor H. Shepardson had earlier declared an interest in Appendix ‘C’ to the report (Charging Digest) did not speak or vote on that Appendix)

The Committee considered the report presented by the Cabinet Member for Resources on the Council’s Revenue Budget Strategy 2022/23 to 2024/25, as endorsed by the Cabinet for consultation purposes at its meeting held on the 17^th January 2022.  The report provided Members with the current view of the Revenue Budget for 2022/2023 together with indicative figures for the 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 financial years based on officers’ projections of spending requirements and taken account of the provisional settlement issued by Welsh Government on the 21^st December 2021. It also reflected current departmental submissions for savings proposals after taking account of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the delivery of those savings.

The Cabinet Member advised that the provisional settlement from Welsh Government this year was considerably higher than we had planned for, however he also noted that the scale of expenditure pressures that we and other local authorities were facing was also at an unprecedented high level, which offset the higher settlement.  The provisional settlement represented an average increase of 9.4% across Wales on the 2021/22 settlement, Carmarthenshire’s increase had been 9.2% (£26.335m) thereby taking the Aggregate External Finance to £311.957m for 2022/23 which included £302k in respect of the Social Care Workforce Grant.

Across the whole of the council’s budgets, validation added £23m, by some margin the highest we have needed to allow for in recent years. 

The budget also included £12.5m. for new departmental expenditure pressures which have been identified by departments and were inescapable if we are to continue to deliver our main services at the current level. As with the inflationary uplift, this is considerably more than we have normally had to build in and reflects the scale of pressures on council services currently.

Turning to our savings proposals, the Cabinet Member highlighted our continued response to the pandemic had further impacted on the delivery of efficiencies. Nevertheless, he noted our budget strategy puts forward some £3.8m of savings next year and a further £7.9m over the following 2 years.  Within this committee’s remit, the current proposals totalled some £268k in year 1 and a further £573k over the following 2 years.

The Budget Strategy proposed a Council Tax of 4.39% for 2022/23, in line with the Medium-Term Financial Plan, and that proposal would be considered as part of the budget finalisation process over the next month and where the Authority received further clarification on cost and grant funding with a view to limiting the Council Tax increase as far as possible. Final budget proposals would then be presented to the Cabinet late February, to ensure a balanced budget was presented to County Council.

The Committee thereupon considered the following detailed budget information appended to the Strategy relevant to its remit:

·       Appendix A(i) – Efficiency summary for the Regeneration, Leisure, Planning and Non HRA Housing Services;

·       Appendix A(ii) – Growth Pressures summary for the Regeneration and Planning Services (none for the Leisure and Non HRA Services;

·       Appendix B – Budget monitoring report for the Regeneration, Leisure, Planning and Non HRA Housing Services;

·       Appendix C – Charging Digest for the Regeneration, Leisure, Planning and Non HRA Housing Services;

The following questions/issues were raised on the report:-

·       In response to a question on the savings achieved on travelling costs during the covid pandemic, the Director of Corporate Services advised that while those figures were available departmentally and in some cases had been adjusted as part of the budget process, they were not consolidated corporately, as we needed to understand the impact of the revised way of working post covid before adjustment to the corporate were made. However, he would make arrangements for the committee to be provided with that information.

RESOLVED that: