Agenda item

In attendance for this item were:

John Hobbs, Director of Environmental and Infrastructure

Michael Hudson, Chief Financial Officer

Wendy Pickering, Finance Manager for E&I

Dave Corbett, Management Information Analyst

Cllr Ken Pollock, Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Infrastructure and Environment

Year-end Budget Monitoring

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) introduced the Panel’s consideration of year end budget information for 2018/19 for services relating to Economy and Environmental Services, and pointed out that from the start of the following year it was hoped to bring forward the timescale for publishing financial information, which in turn would provide the scrutiny panels with real time data.

Referring to the slides in the Agenda (pages 67 – 69), the CFO pointed out the good news about the Directorate underspend of £4.69m, and that this had helped to offset the Council’ overall overspend for the year ending March 2019, which as reported to Cabinet in June was £2m.

There had been increased use of capitalisation, which was currently running at around £7.5m per year and when asked where this featured in the table, the CFO explained that £5m had already been taken off the base budget.

Regarding the reported variance of £2.8m for Business Administration and Systems, this would continue to be monitored although it was not felt to be an issue. 

A lot of data had been used to set base budgets for 2019/20 and at the current position at the end of quarter one, there were no issues other than the deficit for waste services which was due to reduced waste tonnages, which would continue to be monitored. The Chairman’s understanding of how the waste contract worked was confirmed; that the Council had to pay the contractor a fee for the difference between input and output (of the waste to energy plant) and since it was working more efficiently than anticipated, costs were higher. The Director of Economy and Environment (E&I) said that another factor was the falling level of waste per household, although in the longer term this was balanced out by the number of new households.

Performance Monitoring

The Director of Economy and Infrastructure (E&I) highlighted the key points for performance relating to quarter four. In his view quarter four had been business as unusual, apart from the slight reduction in waste tonnages.

Figures for percentage of planned highways inspections completed on time were attributed to impact of the previous year’s cold spells and hot summer, however he believed the Council had the most efficient repair approach.  In his view the dip ion performance was a temporary setback and the Corporate Plan ambition was to be in the upper quartile for performance by 2022.

A member reported residents’ praise for pothole reporting.

Regarding trains, the Director projected improvements in routes to London.

Regarding condition of footways, the Chairman queried the impact of the additional £6m funding, and was advised that the funds had been directed to footways where people wanted it spent, generally closer to classified routes.  Everyone agreed that public satisfaction with footways was an important and emotive topic especially for older people and the Director pointed out that online reporting was a useful tool in focusing attention.

Regarding public satisfaction levels with the condition of roads, the CMR referred to work on this topic during his chairmanship of the Scrutiny Panel, which had suggested disruption from roadworks to be a significant factor, also the public was largely unaware that works may be another agency’s responsibility, and not the Council’s. The Director’s experience was that roads elsewhere in the country were inferior in terms of condition compared to Worcestershire, and he was therefore disappointed by the drop in public satisfaction, although positive feedback had been received from cycle groups.

Regarding waste disposal, a Panel member noted that although recycling levels were largely unchanged, this reflected the national trend and that the fall in amounts of waste produced by households was good news.

The Panel Chairman enquired about any issues for Environmental and Infrastructure services arising from the organisational redesign work, and the Director advised that the Directorate was doing quite well, therefore he was extremely cautious about changing things, in particular after previous bad experiences for example where services had been outsourced and staff expertise lost.  These issues were subject to discussion and it was important that everyone including members identified where they saw value.

Members suggested there may be scope to ask contractors to find savings, however the Director was wary of the implications of contractors working at ‘bare bones’ level’ or of cherry picking areas for savings, something which the Panel agreed on.  However, members expressed the view that efficiencies could be made through encouraging contractors to work innovatively.

The Panel was praised the quality of the performance information now available to them.