Issue - meetings

(1)       Mr Tilson presented a report to the Committee on the forecast outturn against budget for the Communities portfolio.

(2)       In response to a question from Mr Chittenden regarding the deemed “overspend” on the Supporting People budget, Mr Tilson explained that the supporting people budget in previous years had not been fully spent and a reserve had been created to set aside funds for future expenditure programmes. The current year’s expenditure is in excess of the current year’s Area Based Grant (ABG) allocation but was fully funded by drawing down from this reserve. Mr Tilson confirmed that the current “overspend” was a planned programme of expenditure which was agreed by the Commissioning Body. This represented the forecast drawdown for the entire year, rather than an opportunistic drawdown to balance the books in relation to spend to date.

(3)       Mr Tilson explained that the supporting people budget came from a specific grant which had been rolled forward into a reserve; there was a planned programme of expenditure. 

(4)       In relation to the Edenbridge Centre, Mr Crilley stated that as the anticipated land values had not been met it had been necessary to bring in as may organisations as possible to work within the centre and to fund the project costs.  This had been difficult to achieve but they had successfully got the community on board to make this happen and he confirmed that the costs would be fully covered by partner contributions, as well as other units from within KCC that had not been part of the initial specification and plans.

(5)       Regarding the work of the Gateways Members were informed that regular reports were submitted to the Corporate Policy Overview and Scrutiny Committee and copies of these reports were available on request. 

(6)       Mention was made of the variance in expenditure in the Community Safety budget that included a narrative relating to the Future Jobs Fund. Mr Tilson and Mr Hill explained that a number of deputy wardens had been employed by the unit, which had given the opportunity to bring into the job market disadvantaged people and give them experience of work but that this had been fully funded by an application to the Future Jobs Fund and therefore at no cost to the authority. This Fund was established following a successful bid by the Supporting Independence Programme (SIP), who monitored applications and reported gross expenditure and income within their budget. SIP had a net budget of £700k from KCC but the appendix to the monitoring report showed a gross expenditure in excess of £4m.  This referred to allocations made to units who employed Future Jobs Fund applicants, with income also in excess of £4m which was the drawdown of funding received from Government. The benefits of giving people short-term employment, in these placements which lasted 6 months and were fully funded, was is critical in these challenging times.

(7)  RESOLVED that the projected outturn figures for the directorate for 2010/11 based on the first quarterly monitoring report to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 71