Minutes for Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting, Feb 1 2010, 6.00PM official page

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 16 November 2009

The minutes of the last meeting held on 16 November 2009 were confirmed and signed by the Chairman.

To consider the report of the Director of Resources

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Resources on the proposed draft budget for 2010/11 as the Overview & Scrutiny Committee was part of the consultation process and the level of Council Tax increase.      

The first section of the report summarised the base budgets as reviewed by each Policy Advisory Group and this showed a total draft budget of £10,220k (a 1.4% reduction on the current year), with the main savings detailed in Appendix A to he report. The report also detailed the net budget for Services assuming a Council tax increase of 2%

The Council’s confirmed level of grant funding from the Government for 2010/11 was £3.015m, representing a £15k or 0.5% increase over the grant for the current year (which in real terms is a reduction in funding).  The Council continues to be substantially below the grant floor, receiving £665k in grant protection from this mechanism.  There is a major financial risk to the authority if the Government were to withdraw or significantly reduce the floor damping at some future time. 

The proposed investment income for 2010/11 was £1.05m but was subject to review by the Resources PAG.

The final element in arriving at a 2% council tax increase was the use of reserves.  For 2010/11 it was proposed to firstly apply £115k from the reserve built up to help offset the costs of producing the Local Development Document.  It was used largely to offset the one off costs of studies and consultations involved with this process and after applying this sum there would be £149k remaining in the reserve to cover the costs of the final inspection and publication stages of the LDD.

The largest application of reserves, £901k, was planned to come from the Council’s general reserves.  This would substantially reduce the general reserves which are forecast to be around £1,500k at the beginning of 2010/11.  This would have two implications: - firstly reducing the general reserve down to a level of £600k and would largely remove the scope in future years to reduce the council tax and secondly it could take the level of reserves below what could be judged as a prudent minimum.  Under the Reserves policy of the Council the minimum level of general reserves should not fall below 7½% of net service expenditure, which for 2010/11 would be £0.6m.

A 2% increase in the district council tax equates to broadly £3 per annum for a Band D property.  South Bucks DC share of the total council tax bill for the area was approximately 10%.  The level of increase of the overall council tax bill was largely determined by the Bucks CC precept which accounts for just over 70% of the total bill.  This level of gearing means that changes in the District’s Council tax had a marginal impact on the total council tax bill.  

The Committee noted the key risks detailed in the report that could impact on the Council’s finances as identified in the Cabinet report namely: -  ...  view the full minutes text for item 43.

To note the report of the Director of Services

The Committee considered a report of the Director of on how the SBDC Community Safety team’s Revenue Budget, structure, service compared to the other district councils in Buckinghamshire.

There were currently two SBDC Community Safety revenue cost centres: - Community Safety, funded by SBDC and Community Safety – Grant Funded. Chiltern District Council had a Safer Communities cost centre; Aylesbury Vale District Council had three cost centres: Community Safety, CCTV and Partnership Funding; and Wycombe District Council one community safety cost centre. The report listed the breakdown and percentage of the 09/10 budgeted spend for each authority with the exception of recharges as these were not controlled by the community Safety Services.

South Bucks District Council employed 4 community safety staff – a Community Safety Manager, 2 Project Officers and an Antisocial Behaviour Intervention Officer. Each district received equal funding for the posts which were part funded by the Area Based Grant (ABG) this included £7740 towards the partnership support which SBDC use towards one Project Officer Post and £25,000 towards ASB delivery which SBDC use towards funding the ASB Intervention Officer post.  The report went out to detail the equivalent for Chiltern, Aylesbury Vale and Wycombe. The Police ASB Assistants were 2 part time posts each of which were split between 2 districts, Aylesbury and Chiltern and Wycombe and South Bucks.

South Bucks had the most difficult cross border challenge of all of the districts in Bucks. There was no link evident between the level of crime and the size of the Community Safety Team. Having the co-located team based in the council offices encouraged other police staff to attend the offices which means that the rest of the community safety team have better relationships with the neighbourhood teams then in other districts.

There was a strong partnership working across Buckinghamshire. In some ways SBDC works closer than the other districts. The Area Commander and Community Safety Manager meet with the Chief Executive and Portfolio Holder on a monthly basis to discuss the current crime trends and community safety issues which need to be focused on. This ensures that communication between the agencies at the most strategic level for the area was excellent, but does not happen in the other districts.

All officers who work for SBDC were required to meet with the Community Safety Manager to be introduced to Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act. SBDC Community Safety consider both enforcement were positive opportunities to deal with crime and antisocial behaviour. Each Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) was attended by a member of the Community Safety Team.

Community Safety Teams had often relied upon funding which was provided from central government to deliver projects that improve the safety of SBDC communities. In the coming year the focus would move towards obtaining money from less traditional funding sources so that SBDC would continue to deliver the projects that had been successful in the past, whilst also developing new ways to deal with the issues that need to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 44.

To note the report of the Director of Resources

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Resources on the fraud work being carried out by the Council.

The largest area of fraud risk for South Bucks DC was housing benefits.  The benefit fraud service was included in the original Revenues and Benefits outsourcing contract with ITNET in 1997. However due to the poor service provided it was decided that this would not be included in any further outsourcing contract and when the service was retendered in 2004 it was brought back in-house.  At around the time this happened the service was inspected by the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate (part of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)) resulting in a poor report containing many recommendations for improvement. The Council enlisted the help of the DWP’s Performance Development Team to implement the recommendations and establish the in-house service. Performance has continued to be very good in both dealing with the detection and sanctioning of fraudsters and deterring potential benefit fraud.

Performance in the area of fraud detection was based around the number of sanctions which were achieved per 1,000 caseload. Until recently councils were scored on the number of sanctions achieved. Work took place on large numbers of data matches that had not previously been investigated and this resulted in sanctions being applied in many cases.

2009/2010 had been a difficult year for the benefit fraud team with the capacity of the already small team being reduced due to the illness and death of the Council’s Fraud Investigator. Due to the partnership working which had been developed with Chiltern DC (detailed below), the service had not suffered greatly and performance had again been commendable.

The report listed the various type’s fraud cases under investigation as at 1 April 2009 and the current cases being investigated as at 31 December 2009.

The Fraud and Welfare Partnership with Chiltern District Council was formed in 2008 initially as a two year project. The main objectives were to provide resilience at times of staff or skills shortages, to have greater capacity to implement changes and to address the mutual issue of key person dependency. Articles detailing successful actions taken have been placed in both Council publications – South Bucks Report and the Chiltern Chronicle and press releases have been issued in all appropriate cases.

Single Person Discount (SPD) Fraud - In 2008 the Audit Commission introduced data matching between Council Tax and Electoral Registration records and all matches within South Bucks were investigated and inappropriate discounts withdrawn.

Although the majority of the Council’s anti fraud resource was directed towards revenues and benefits, the Council did consider fraud and corruption issues across all the Council activities. Each internal audit will review the controls that were in place to prevent and detect fraud or other errors, and within the annual Internal Audit plan 5 days of work were specifically allocated to proactive fraud work.

The Head of Finance maintained an overall Fraud and Corruption risk assessment to guide the allocation of the 5 days  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

To receive:

(a)               The Minutes for 9 October 2009

(b)               The Agenda  and  Minutes for 13 November 2009

(c)               The Agenda  and  Minutes for 11 December 2009

Members noted for information the Minutes for 9 October 2009; the Agenda and Minutes for the 13 November and 11 December 2009 meetings regarding the Bucks County Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee for Public Health.

Members were informed that the new Chief Executive of Heatherwood & Wexham Park Hospital was Julie Burgess.

An opportunity for Members to raise questions about items:

• during the meeting
• written questions submitted previously
• raised by information items

There were no Members questions submitted at this meeting.

To note the work programme timetable for 2010

The Committee received the latest update of the work programme incorporating all actions and reviews within the responsibility of the Committee, planned by meeting date for the period February – November 2010.

The following items be added/amendments to the Work Programme for reports next time: -

·        Ambulance Response Times – Call-in Representatives from South Central Ambulance Trust to attend next meeting

·        VfM – Community Safety - CDRP

·        Pathfinder

·        Pybebush

·        LDF – look at process of following approval –  Portfolio for Sustainable Development - Cllr Reed to be invited

·        BCC Salt Stocks (Joint Scrutiny) - allocation; areas done – shops, footpaths, roads

·        Increase of cost of Environmental Portfolio (8.2%) – why

·        MSA (Beaconsfield) – an overview  a year on after the area opened to include: - the environmental impact of noise; jobs; crime traffic flows etc, including analytical summary using any comparative data derived from the Environmental Impact Assessment and reports from the planning enquiry 

·        a Fraud update report setting out the background with reference to Verdant employees, and details of the follow up action. 

            RESOLVED that the work programme, with amended topics and priority dates as appropriate, be adopted as part of the future work programme of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for the year April 2009 – May 2010

To consider any matters which the Chairman agrees as urgent in

accordance with Section 100B of the Local Government Act 1972

o       Monday 21 June  - Scrutiny Conference Aylesbury Town Council.

To note the update

The Committee was informed that: -

o       the Chief Executive had written to the South Central Ambulance Trust to ask for the ambulance response times for South Bucks and to-date had received no response;

o       The Corporate Information Officer, Zoe Bloomfield, had also requested the information from David Court, Service Development Manager, Buckinghamshire PCT also without success.

RESOLVED that the Director of Resources writes to South Central Ambulance Trust inviting them to attend next meeting on 17 May to discuss the ambulance response times for South Bucks for the past year

Members noted that the next scheduled meeting would be held on Monday 17 May 2010 at 6.00 p.m.

The meeting having commenced at 6.00 p.m. terminated at 7.47 p.m.