Announcements by:

(1)          The Lord Mayor

(2)          The Sheriff

(3)          The Leader of the Council

(4)          The Chief Executive, Chief Finance Officer, Monitoring Officer

The Lord Mayor announced;

-       his charity dinner had raised over £2,000 for the Lord Mayor’s charities.

-       he would be visiting the city’s twin cities of Bonn and Leiden in the first week of May.

The Sheriff reported on his attendance at an Oxford Rugby League event and encouraged members to contact him about promoting opportunities to become involved in the sport.

The Leader of the Council informed members that the Palestine Unlocked celebration of Palestinian life and culture would take place between 4^th and 21^st June.

The Council’s Chief Finance Officer announced:

“£300k was placed into the 2014/15 budget as a corporate policy contingency; it was agreed that the contingency was not required and was to be removed for the 2015/16 budget.  This budget removal was unfortunately shown on Appendix 3 (page 65, line 21) to the Budget setting report against Culture rather than Policy due to an administrative error; this then fed through to Appendices 1 (page 24) and 2 (page 26).

This gave the impression that there was a reduction in the Council’s Culture which is not actually the case. There is no effect on the Council’s overall service budgets from the removal of the £300k. Had the administrative error not occurred, the Culture budget for 2015/16 would have been £456k on Appendices 1 and 2.

An approval will be sought from CEB in 2015/16 to vire £300K from Policy to Culture to correct the budget.”