Issue - meetings

(1)       Mr Tilson presented a report on the initial budget monitoring exception report for 2010/11 which was due to be reported to Cabinet on 12July 2010. 

(2)       In response to a question on approaches that had been made to get the coroners budget removed from the County Council, Mr Hill explained that there had been support from the previous government to appoint a Chief Coroner for the United Kingdom, however the Coalitation Government were not proceeding with this.   This meant that there was still no single point of contact for issues relating to the coroners service.

(3)       Mr Hill explained that as much as possible was being done to ensure that organisations that KCC supported with revenue or capital funding were not so reliant on KCC in the future.  He gave the example of the Museum of Kent Life which had been transferred to a commercial enterprise to run.  Regarding the Turner Contemporary, although there was an ongoing revenue responsibility the Trust were encouraged to raise funds themselves so that they were ultimately not reliant on Local Government funding. 

(4)       Mr Hill stated that, depending on what happened in October 2010 with the Comprehensive Spending Review, there may be a significant reduction in revenue funding bearing in mind that the Directorate drew a large amount of funding from external grants.  This would be discussed further by this Committee’s IMG on the budget. 

(7)       Mr Tilson explained that approximately 50% of the Directorate’s income came from external grants and any reduction could have a direct impact on services. Each unit was looking at its fixed and variable cost element to try to ensure that there was the ability to reduce expenditure in line with funding. 

(8)       RESOLVED that the budget variations and comments for the Communities Portfolio for 2010/11, based on the first exception monitoring report to Cabinet be noted.