Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Cabinet Member for Finance & Assets

RESOLVED

i)       To approve the transfer of £111k from the General Fund reserve to the earmarked transformation reserve.

ii)      To delegate to the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Assets, the authority to use the transformation fund as appropriate.

REASON

To top up of the earmarked transformation reserve for projects that will help transform the Council in the future; being effectively funded from the 2020/21 budget surplus.

The Cabinet Member for Finance & Assets introduced the report on the use of the Transformation Reserve during the current financial year.  He reminded Members that the Council had operated a Transformation Reserve for a number of years, and it had been used for the modernisation of operations, including the digitalisation of a number of services.  

This year the fund would be used to update Environmental Health & Licensing services onto the new cloud-based planning and regulatory system.  This would require the redesign of many of the department’s processes, and ultimately lead to a more efficient service.  Over the next two to three years, Building Control & Planning systems would also be updated.

Cabinet had topped up this fund from operational surpluses every year to keep these projects moving forward.  The Cabinet Member advised that the Council’s operating overspend in 2020/2021, caused by the pandemic and resulting pressures on services, had been compensated for by one-off government grants, thus enabling the Council to generate a surplus, as detailed in the report.  The Cabinet Member proposed using part of this surplus to top up the fund as in previous years. 

He also proposed that, as suggested by the Finance & Assets PDAG, delegation of the authority to use the fund as appropriate would include himself as well as the Leader and Chief Executive.

RESOLVED

i)          To approve the transfer of £111k from the General Fund reserve to the earmarked transformation reserve.

ii)         To delegate to the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Assets, the authority to use the transformation fund as appropriate.

REASON

To top up of the earmarked transformation reserve for projects that will help transform the Council in the future; being effectively funded from the 2020/21 budget surplus.