Agenda item

To receive the report of the Head of Legal and Democratic Services on any Notices of Motion received by him (Lilac pages).

Councillors are asked to note that any Notices of Motion must be received by the Head of Legal and Democratic Services no later than noon on Thursday, 10 May 2018.

The Council had before it a Notice of Motion set out in the agenda papers standing in the names of Mrs E B Tucker, Prof J W Raine, Mr M E Jenkins and Mrs F M Oborski.

The motion was moved by Mrs E B Tucker and seconded by Mrs F M Oborski who both spoke in favour of it.

The Council agreed to deal with the motion on the day.

Those in favour of the motion made the following comments:

·         The Notice of Motion requested greater transparency in the budget process for members and the public. Members only became aware of the CIPFA report as a result of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request some considerable time after Cabinet received it in 2017. It was also concerning that the Council had not taken up the offer of a further report from CIPFA which was included in the fee. The budget was one of the few statutory functions that full Council considered and all members should be made fully aware of all the information available to enable properly informed amendments to be formulated

·         It was accepted that a lot of information was made available to councillors but it was apparent that the administration was only sharing the information it felt appropriate to share. The CIPFA report was critical of the Council's budget. It appeared that the administration was trying to hide the details by not sharing them. It was impossible to scrutinise the budget without a core document being made available.

Those against the motion made the following comments:

·         The Leader of the Council commented that the central premise of the Motion was that members were not being made aware of the financial position of the Council and this was not the case. The themes in the CIPFA slides were made known to members. The budget-setting process was long established, open and transparent. The draft medium term financial plan had been published well in advance and members had had the opportunity at numerous briefings, panels and public events to be engaged. All councillors had access to detailed budget reports which included the financial risks and views of the Chief Financial Officer. Members had the opportunity at any time to seek advice from the Chief Financial Officer. Budget briefings were poorly attended and he urged members to attend future briefings. The Cabinet's role was to formulate proposals and for Scrutiny to examine them and put forward alternative proposals. An informal meeting of SLT/Cabinet had been presented with a series of slides produced by CIPFA in June 2017. TheCIPFA slides had been commissioned by the previous Chief Financial Officer to inform his advice to SLT/Cabinet members at the start of the new Council. The slides raised a series of questions and suggestions but the core issues in them had already been addressed and made public

·         Attendance at budget meetings of the OSPB and Cabinet was poor and all members needed to make more effort to engage in the budget-setting process

·         The CIPFA slides had been made available to OSPB but did not make a lot of sense without reference to the accompanying commentary. The Council had been open and transparent in agreeing to release the slides under the Freedom of Information Act despite the member feeling there being no requirement to do so. The only issue really was the cost to the Council and it was hoped that some of that cost would be recovered from CIPFA.

On being put to the vote, the motion was lost.