Shaer Halewood, Director of Finance and Investment, introduced a report on the formal budget process, as set out in the constitution and in accordance with the legal requirements to set a balanced and sustainable budget for 2020/21.

This report also presented an update on the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) covering the period from 2021/22 to 2024/25.

The full Council position for 2020/21 was now balanced and included pressures of £34.9m, offset by savings of £32.9m, the individual components of these were included in Appendices 2 and 3 to the report.

The pressures and savings relating to the Business portfolio were summarised in Appendix 1 to the report.

Shaer Halewood then elaborated upon a number of the nine proposals in turn and her responses to questions from Members included:

·  With regard to the delivery of a new organisational structure and operating model, there were no plans for compulsory redundancies.

·  For the reprofiling of the Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP), this was the third time that the Council had done this with money already set aside in its own budget. The Council had not renegotiated any of its loans it had changed the way that money was set aside for the repayment of debt. She would provide a more technical answer as to how this worked in writing to the Committee.

·  In respect of income from new investments extensive due diligence would be undertaken before any investment was made and the Council would not invest in anything that was not ethical or that it thought could go wrong.

·  The Council could purchase property that had an anchor tenant and become a landlord with the Council employing a company to manage that investment. There were many options available with regard to property investments but they would have to be the right ones for the Council.

·  The 1% rise in public sector lending rates had not created any pressures at the moment as it was on new borrowing. If there was a new large item that went into the capital programme then there would be a pressure.

·  She did not have the detail of the unachieved savings of £6.03m referred to in appendix 3 to the report but she was aware that some of these would be out of officers’ control, such as the Assisted Travel Contract where demand had increased during the year. There were no savings which had not at least achieved some saving and she would be able to provide some more information on this. For 2020/21 a more robust process had been put in place on delivering savings through a process of feasibility, acceptability and deliverability.

·  The savings put forward did not really impact on the services which the Council provided as the Cabinet had given a steer to officers that they did not want to see any cuts to services which the Council provided to vulnerable residents.

·  With regard to the financial pressure referred to in appendix 2 and the Wirral Growth Company (WGC), this was a savings item from the previous year and anticipated income from WGC which unfortunately had not happened due to a delay in establishing the Growth Company. With the issue now moving and the Partnership Business Plan with Muse due to come to Cabinet for approval soon income was anticipated for 2020/21.

·  In respect of the review of contracts savings item, this was a review of all contracts up for renewal and whether or not they should be renewed in the same way, whether they should be renewed at all or whether the service could be commissioned in a different way or in a different format. Conversations were also being held with suppliers of existing contracts along similar lines to see if costs could be reduced and some Councils were negotiating with suppliers to not pay any inflationary increases.

Resolved – That –

(1)  the financial proposals for 2020/21, that will be subject to further consideration by Cabinet, be noted;

(2)  the financial challenges facing the Council in setting a sustainable and balanced budget for the MTFP period from 2021/22 to 2024/25, be noted.