Issue - meetings

(Please bring with you to the meeting the Draft Budget and Medium Term Plan previously circulated)

(Report by Mr Paul Carter, Leader of the Council, Mr Nick Chard, Cabinet Member for Finance, Mr Peter Gilroy, Chief Executive and Ms Lynda McMullan, Director of Finance)

(1)       The Chairman declared consideration of this item to be urgent as the report had not been available at the time the agenda for this meeting was despatched.  The reason for that was because the report needed to include the most up to date information and analysis of the final Local Government Settlement figures, the final Tax Bases agreed by the Kent District Councils and the surplus or deficits announced by the District Council’s Collections Funds.

(2)       This report summarised changes which had been made since the Draft Medium Term Plan was published on 7 January 2009.  Mr Carter said that the policy proposals were unchanged from those published on 7 January 2009 when the KCC element of the Council Tax increase for 2009/10 was calculated at 2.85%.  However, the changes identified in this report has said Mr Carter, reduced the County Council’s funding requirements through Council Tax by a net £2.187m.  This saving would be passed onto Kent residents by way of a reduction in the proposed Council Tax which meant that this could now be reduced down to 2.44%.  Mr Carter said that he was pleased that this reduction could be made when viewed against a backdrop of a volatile global and national economy and demonstrated once again, KCC’s track record of delivering a budget to agreed cash limits.  Mr Carter also said that the County Council would be aiming to deliver an ambitious Capital Programme and that he wanted to see its expenditure on that shared across the Kent economy.

(3)       Mr Chard said that the budget had been developed following a wide ranging consultation which had helped the Council to identify service priorities and targets.  The Policy Overview Committees had considered the budget proposals and they had also been reported to the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee.  There had also been a meeting with business leaders and the outcome from all these meetings were set out in Appendices (b) and (c) to the Cabinet report.

(4)       Cabinet RESOLVED that the following proposals be submitted to County Council at its meeting on 19 February 2009:-

(a)       the Revenue Budget proposals for 2009-10. Cabinet noted the proposed change to the capital financing and local priorities budgets, noted the changes to the council tax base and endorsed the resulting change to the council tax;

(b)       the budget requirement of £886.5m before deducting Area Based Grant;

(c)        a total requirement from Council Tax of £554.3m to be raised through precept to meet the 2009-10 budget requirement;

(d)       a Council Tax as set out below, for the listed property bands;

            being a 2.44% increase over 2008-09;

(e)       the Capital Investment proposals, together with the necessary use of borrowing, revenue, grants, capital receipts, renewals and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3