Anna Winship, Management Accountancy Manager, will be attending to present the Integrated Performance Report for Quarter 2. The Panel is asked to consider the report and make any recommendations to Cabinet accordingly. This report will be issued as a supplement.

Anna Winship, Management Accountancy Manager, introduced the Integrated Performance Report for Q2 2019/20.

The Council’s financial position was reported as being forecast to have an adverse variance of 0.64%, £0.149m against a net budget of £23.205m within the General Fund. The key variances related to: unbudgeted expenditure relating to the Town Hall, greater spending on equalities work by Business Improvement, Law and Governance earning unbudgeted income through the Service Level Agreement with Oxford Housing Company Ltd (OCHL) and savings at ODS from the development of the Recycling Transfer Station not being realised due to the project not being implemented in year.

Within the Housing Revenue Account, the outturn position was forecast to be a £320k favourable variance against the budget revised on 20^th May. The most significant budget variations were identified as being properties which had been made available for temporary accommodation due to fewer individuals exercising their Right to Buy had therefore generated an income of £0.8m, whilst there had also been an adverse variance of £0.682m due to one-off costs related to tower blocks, consultancy fees and feasibility costs related to Phase 2 of the OCHL development programme. The Panel sought clarification whether recent fraud investigations in relation to Right to Buy applications had reduced the number and it was confirmed that following commencement of the investigations a number of existing applications had been withdrawn.

The budget for capital expenditure was explained to have been agreed originally at £101.526m, but had subjected to a major review, to develop a more deliverable and well-timetabled budget. The forecasted capital outturn following the review was stated to be £59.962m. The Panel raised questions over whether references to ‘retimetabling’  were euphemisms for slippage. The response was that although there were similarities, retimetabling was used to demonstrate a greater degree of proactive management and that the rapidity of the spending reductions was a sign of the greater realism that had been injected into the Council through the work of the Project Management Office. Particular concern was raised at why planning delays were not foreseen by OCHL which had led to the retimetabling of over £24m, and why resources were not being redeployed to schemes without planning delays to enable momentum to be maintained. It was responded that such redeployment was happening, and that the nature of OCHL as a development company meant that with the unpredictability of schemes it always faced a challenge to ensure it had drawn down enough money to cover its work whilst not drawing down purposelessly.

Discussion was held as to the impact of the Project Management Office, with particular reference made to the usefulness of having visibility on the progress of projects prior to their inclusion in the budget. Whilst positive moves towards transparency and rigour were noted by the Panel, advice was given to remind members that the team had only been fully staffed for approximately 4 months, and a lot of existing projects had had to be revisited and retrofitted with a more thorough project planning process. As such, it would not be reasonable to expect to see the impacts of the Project Management Office in increasing the ceiling of capital spend until the next year.

Clarification was sought regarding specific items in the HRA accounts, namely how it was possible to have a surplus arise within the service charge, and what sort of items constituting miscellaneous income. Officers present did not know the answers at the meeting and undertook to share the information subsequently. The Panel also sought explanations of the significant underspend with regards to on-street charging with the Go Ultra Low project. The challenge was reported to have been in finding sufficient landspace for installing chargers.

Regarding the Council’s performance, the three red-rated indicators were identified as the number of target-group users of the Council’s leisure facilities, the number of new homes granted planning permission in the city, and the amount of employment floor space permitted for development. The red-rated corporate risks were in relation to Housing, the impact of Brexit on economic growth and balancing the Medium Term Financial Plan and the impact of central government to increase lending rates on Public Works Loan Board loans by 1%.

The Panel NOTED the report.