Minutes:
Steven Pilsworth, Head of Strategic Finance gave a presentation on the proposals for the City Council’s budget for 2013/14 and Medium Term Financial Strategy to 2022/23.
During discussion the following points were noted:
· The Community Leadership Fund was not always used properly by city councillors and would suggest a reduction of 50%. Applications for use of the fund should also be thoroughly assessed for need. Spending of the Community Leadership Fund was published on the website so the public were able to see how it had been spent. How the fund was used was also an issue raised by the Youth Council who had suggested that there should be one pot of money where bids were independently decided on.
· Whilst supporting the end of the Neighbourhood Committees, there was concern about the role of the Neighbourhood Managers being relegated. They did an excellent job in providing support to parish councils and parishes would want assurances that the role would be maintained to support parish councils. Thank you for the positive comments about the Neighbourhood Managers. City councillors also had concerns about whether there would still be the same level of support as now and this needed to be looked at. Before neighbourhood management was introduced councillors were previously directed to the relevant officers but having the managers may have made some councillors reliant on them to get problems solved rather than speaking to the relevant officers directly. We needed to take the pressure off the managers to enable them to work on major projects and with parish councils. All departments needed to make significant savings and we could not commit at this stage that there will not be changes, however as stated at the previous meeting we were committed to parish councils.
· Litter bins in some parishes appeared not to be emptied as often as they should which was leading to more littering. Litter was an area that the Council had received much feedback and to address this we had proposed an additional street cleansing team to work in targeted areas. It was important for both city and parish councillors to raise issues around litter with Enterprise Peterborough.
· Could the Community Payback Teams be used to help clear litter? It was believed that they could only be used for specific issues and not day to day work. Neighbourhood Managers could help parishes obtain help from the payback teams.
· How much money does the Tour Series bring into the city? This had been one of the difficult decisions the Cabinet had to make. The race brought people into the city and also brought wide media coverage including television. However it costs the Council money to bring it to Peterborough as we were unable to secure our own sponsorship, unlike events such as the Great Eastern Run.
· There appeared to be some anomalies between the budget book and the consultation document around renewable energy. In the budget book it stated capital investment of £100m and in the consultation document it stated £149m, why was there a discrepancy?The figures were two separate items. The £149m was the investment in the energy parks and the £100m was the Invest to Save budget for the scheme where the cost of borrowing would be offset by the income generated.
· Should the energy parks receive planning permission it appeared that there would be a phasing of wind power over solar power as wind power created greater returns. If the Council went ahead with wind power land would still be available for farming. It needed to be remembered that only 0.24% of local arable land would be used for the schemes. The land being proposed for the schemes produced feed crops and not food that would end up on our tables. If we did not go forward with the schemes, which we believe can bring in over £4m each year, then the future years budget gaps would increase. It was about protecting services and doing what was right for Peterborough.
· Was the London Road Football Ground investment still in the budget? The proposed education centre at the ground was still shown as a capital investment in the budget and was agreed a number of years ago. Work had not yet started as we required the football club’s permission to start work and that had not yet been received.
· It was fully accepted that everyone would be under severe financial pressure in the future and it was important to ensure that the Council and parish councils were working to the same aims. Some parishes may want to pick up some services but needed to ensure that this did not raise costs. There was a need to ensure that reliance on parish councils did not push up precepts. We agree that the next few years would be tough and it may come to a point where we started looking at parish councils and precepts.
· Would the Council be suggesting to parish councils about taking on services or would it be left to chance that parishes would want to do it? Within the current localism agenda we could see it being put forward that parishes in the future may wish to pick up some services. It would need to be a joint initiative between the Council and the individual parishes as not all parish councils may want to take on services.This may be a good issue to examine at the next meeting of this group to look at what would need to happen and what support may be needed for parish councils to take on some services.
· If some parishes decided to take on services would they be funded to do it especially the smaller councils? This would need to be mutually agreeable to both the Council and parish council. We would be happy to have those types of discussions as this Cabinet supported the localism agenda. An example of it working well was the Gladstone Park Community Centre where we worked with the community about them taking over the running of the centre and it has now proved to be a real success.