Issue - meetings

(Item B2 – Report by Mr M Hill, Cabinet Member and Ms A Honey, Managing Director) (Mr D Shipton, Head of Finance and Asset Management was present for this item to answer questions)

(1)          Mr Shipton advised that the timing of monitoring reports, to more closely align POCs and the quarterly reports to Cabinet was being addressed corporately.  He then highlighted four main areas of concern within the revenue budget for 2007/08 identified in the report,  as follows:- ;

(i)         Adult Education is still forecasting a £330k in-year deficit and would not be able to repay the loan of £500k granted to cover part of the 2006/7 deficit.  The latest MTP includes provision for this loan to be repaid over two years.  Mr Shipton advised that a paper on the Adult Education strategy to increase the yield from tuition feeds included in the MTP would be brought to the next Policy Overview Committee meeting on 2^nd June.

(ii)        The Coroner’s Service is another area of concern due to the overspend on costs related to investigations.  In the latest monitoring the overspend has been reduced to £206k following renegotiations on mortuary fees with hospital trusts and with Medway Council.  This is in spite of the Coroners’ pay award for this financial year which has added an additional £40k spend.  The net overspend of £200k has been covered by underspends elsewhere in the Directorate. 

(iii)       Mr Shipton advised that the Arts Unit has undergone a major restructure to deliver a more strategic role.  This new structure means the service can manage expenditure within the existing budget following the withdrawal of external grants.

(iv)       Mr Shipton advised that the fourth main area of concern relates to the Library Service and the loans of audio visual materials.  The Library Service has developed a new strategy to target its market resulting in a planned £120k reduction in the income budget.  The service is managing this planned reduction through reduced expenditure on consumables. 

(2)                 In order to balance the budget to cover overspends on Coroners, Arts and Youth Offending the Strategic Management Team had agreed a £500k reduction in spending on non essential non staffing budgets.  This would balance the overall portfolio budget other than Adult Education.

(3)                 In response to a question on whether the variances could be shown as an overall percentage, Mr Shipton advised that total variance for each unit and all variances over £100k were reported to Cabinet.  He agreed to look into adding a column in the table for each unit identifying the percentage variance.

(4)                 Mr Shipton explained that the in-year variance in Adult Education was due to the original 24,000 estimated enrolments not being achieved (only 17,000 students enrolled in quarter 2).  This appears to be a national trend arising from uncertain financial markets.  Members were reassured that the future strategy aims to increase the yield from fees and not the level of fees.

(5)                 In response to a question on why the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 67