Transcript

So first of all, welcome to everybody and just moving to the agenda. The first gender item is obviously a declaration to the intent to record the meeting. So obviously, if you stay in the meeting, you are giving your agreement that you're okay with that. If you're not, then please leave gender item to apologies for absence. We only have 1 apology this morning. That's from counselor. Lee. Grazier and then that moves me into agenda item 3, which is the appointment of a new chair. So open to any nominations. Counselor Smith. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Charles. Thank you. Obviously, it's the standard standard of the committee that actually would move into the chair and follows Mansfield. So with that, anybody got a second? That thank you. So with that, we'll put it to the vote. Thank you. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Council Hollis. I'll move out the way for you. Thank you Andy. And thanks for the, the year you've put in so far. It's been certainly lots of challenges that we face. And I think lots of discussion that's going to be born in this meeting and I think the meetings to come based on the last year as well. But I think the next item is to appoint a vice chairman and by convention, we'll be looking to the members from Newark to select who they'd like to propose. Thank you. That's what council Paul peacock. And do we have a second? A second. All in favor. Wonderful. So that's the peacock. Would you like to come to the front, please? And then agenda item five is declarations of interest by members and officers. If we have any no, no interest to the Claire and then we've got the, I'm sorry and then we've got agenda item six minutes of the meeting held on the 15th of January, 2024. Do we, do I have a proposal for those or any comments to make on them? Everybody happy with those minutes? Councillor Bergen to propose and Councillor Whitby to second. All in favor of those minutes. Thank you. And then we move into the first substantive item with it, which is the operations report and presume we're going to hear from Nada. Thank you. Thank you. So the reports just for noting first item is regarding the staffing restructure. So we've now gone to consultation with staff with a view to responding to any comments around the consultation by the end of the month. Essentially, the need for the restructure is around the need to reinstate weekend working. The decision was taken some time ago to close remembrance room. We know that it's caused problems with members of the staff and therefore we need to reinstate the weekend working. So we're getting very close to being able to do that as part of the consultation. The consultation and the staffing restructure also focuses on how we work more efficiently as a team with the hope that we can make an efficiency saving of around £41,000 annually in terms of staffing costs, even with the introduction of the book of remembrance weekend working. So we should be able to come to finalizing that process relatively quickly. In terms of the cremator and ancillary equipment on point 2.2, we're still facing the challenges of our aging cremators. We did have another breakdown last week. It was only a short one and we were able to get the cremator back up and running quite quickly. So we are fully operational and in the process of having all of our all of the cremator service this week. But we're still feeling it and still maintaining kind of a lower capacity in order to not put any additional pressure on the cremators. We are looking to get number three relined in the next couple of months. We're just waiting for confirmation date when that happened. But that's actually just normal periodic maintenance that's required anyway. We are still experiencing some issues with number four cremator and that's because of the aging software. We think there's a bit of a software problem with number four, but it is operational currently. But of course, this kind of buys into where we are in terms of our issues with our ongoing cremators. Item 2.4 on the events calendar, we had a Mother's Day service in March. It's the first one that we've carried out and it was really well received. We have some amazing feedback from attendees at the service. And we're therefore replicating that and holding a Father's Day service this coming June. We're utilizing local celebrants and funeral directors so that we can keep the costs down as much as possible. But it means that we're involving our wider bereavement services team to support us in holding events. What's been really positive is the support of Ashfield, New York and Sherwood in sharing that information on their social media platforms and pushing that out with your own PR, because that means we've got a wider pool and we're getting many more attendees. We saw over 100 people through the doors and for a first event for Mother's Day it was really successful. So we hope to replicate that and we've obviously got Christmas planned in as well for I believe it's the 14th of December this year. We are looking at holding additional services also. So looking at where we might be able to hold service in the cemeteries for families who've utilized the services within the crematorium, but also in the cemetery so that we can support children, bereaved children, specifically within the service. So we're working with local charities at the moment to see how we might be able to be supported to hold those services, which would be really helpful. Item 2.8, cremation numbers during the last quarter in comparison to quarter four of 22, 23 have seen about a 15% reduction. We are equating this to the fact that we've had limited capacity because of the issues with the cremators. There has been a dip in excess death rates anyway, and we won't see the impact of that or the actual data until later on in the year. But obviously, again, because we're having to reduce numbers that has reduced our cremation numbers, like for like on this time last year. Any comments? Any questions? Questions or comments for Nada? I just have a couple if that's okay. So am I right in assuming that we've got three cremators currently operational for three? Yeah. And the one that's off is completely non recoverable, isn't it? Yes, I thought that was the case. Yeah. And with regards to the relining, what impact will that have on day to day activity? Because obviously, when we've had it potentially relined before we've had all four, and now we've only got three. So what will that actually mean for day to day activities? So essentially it means that it's out of action for up to three to four weeks, because we have a period of about two weeks of the work taking place, and then you have a period of drying out so that you're not damaging the cast quickly after it's been reset. But what we're doing is obviously we've tried to make sure that we're doing it during our quieter period anyway, so there's as little impact as possible. So we've already arranged the decision, we're just waiting for a date so that we can get that booked in as quickly as possible. So it has minimum impact in terms of affecting our cremation numbers. I would just say with the utilization of our holdover policy, that does allow us to maintain numbers a bit better so that we can roll over cremations with permission from families, of course. When we do see a reduction in the cremation numbers, where do they go? Because presumably people ring up and say, well the funeral director I presume rings up, so we'd like to book a cremation, we haven't got room for them. Do we have an indication of where they end up going to, and do they come back? Do they then call next time and see if we're available? What we'll say is, wherever possible, we work with families to try and find an alternative date, of course, because more often than not families do want to come to us, so we will try and accommodate that as much as possible. What it means is that potentially their booking is delayed. Where we do lose families, we don't have any indication as to where they go, other than we know who are our competitors locally in terms of where families will tend to go to. But we don't have any quantitative data that will tell us what that looks like. Councillor Smith. Yeah, thank you Nada. I can remember at the last meeting I asked if other crematoriums have seen a similar dip in their stats. I know there's a note in the minutes to bring it back to this meeting, I don't know if you've got that information to hand. So we don't as yet have the data for 2023, so the cremation society collects that data from crematoriums locally and we'll look to get that kind of the middle of this year. I think I've made reference to it in the development report, but we can bring it back to the next meeting that tells you what that data is looking like for last year. It only gives you full complete years, so rather than working financial years, it'll give us a calendar year for last year. Yeah, just a question about a dip in excess deaths. Is there a possibility that that's dipped because we had an increase in excess deaths a few years ago and it might be a problem that's nationwide? Yeah, I think absolutely it could be attributed to the excess deaths previously around the pandemic. Some of the data is a bit unreliable because of that at the moment, so really it's waiting to see how it then starts to pan out. We see the numbers level out a bit, but some of the data is a bit unreliable on that basis. Does anybody else have any more questions or comments? Do we need to vote to note this? Yeah, vote to note the report then. Thank you. So then we move to agenda item eight, which is the annual statement of accounts. Thank you, Chair. So the purpose of this report is to present to the committee the statements of accounts for 23/24 for the joint crematorium and showing the financial position as at the end of March 2024, including the revenue and capital activity during the financial year. The accounts have been audited by the appointed auditor, which is TIAA limited, and no issues have been identified. Each authority has now received a disaggregation for them to include those in the authority's own statements of accounts, which are due to be completed by the end of this month. I don't intend to go into the detail within the actual accounts, but myself and Ellie are here and we can answer any questions should you have any. In terms of the financial outing position, in summary, the surplus at the end of the financial year is better than budgeted by $104,233, which has been allocated to general reserve for future use or distribution by this committee. So table one, which is on page 19 of the agenda pack, summarises the activity by income and expenditure type and identifies variances across these areas. Although income was lower than anticipated, as you've just heard from NADA in terms of from the ops report because of the lower throughput, total expenditure was also lower, therefore still achieving a better than anticipated out turned position. Details of the main variances are in sections 3.2 and 3.3, which is on pages 21 and 22. As you know from previous meetings, there was always going to be a significant under spend on the capital programme to delay in the decision in terms of any new or redevelopment of the crematorium. So that was the out turned position on the capital programme. In terms of the balance sheet, I know the committee's always been concerned about the aged debt position. So there has been a continued effort to reduce the aged debt and to ensure prompt payment. Although the actual debt figure at 31 March 24 is higher than it was at the same point last year, it's not something that as a committee you should be concerned about because the actual older debt has reduced and it's new debt and there was a concerted effort to make sure all debt was raised by the end of 31 March as well. What has happened during the year because of the efforts to reduce the debt, the actual provisions made for bad debt payments has actually reduced in year, which is a positive sign to show that actually the debt position is improving. So I therefore ask the committee to consider the recommendations. The first recommendation is that the statements of accounts as presented in Appendix A for the financial year 23/24 is approved. That the 23/24 budgeted surplus distribution is detailed in Appendix A, 3.7 on page 7 is approved. That up to £4,603,861 of the unused capital budget for 23/24 as detailed in 3.8.1 in Appendix A is carried forward for use in 24/25. And then the detailed revenue and capital information in Appendix D is denoted. And like I said, I'm happy myself and Ellie will take any questions that you have. Thank you very much. Does any member have any questions or points you'd like to raise? If not, we'll propose the recommendations then as printed. Do I have a mover? Councillor Whitby and seconded by Councillor Bergin. All in favour? Thank you. Now we move to the dates of the next meeting, which can be found, I believe, on page 88 of the report. As you'll see, it lists not only the date, but where the meetings are proposed for. I presume all members are happy with that. Any questions? We can note that report if not. And then we will move to the work programme, which is printed on 89 to 91. Does any member have any questions on the work programme agenda item 10? So if you happen to note those as well. And then we then move to exclusion of the press and public. So to consider resolving that under Section 100A Part 4 of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act. Do I remember to propose that? Councillor Smith and Councillor Whitby to second. All in favour of excluding the press and public? That's unanimous. Do we need to stop the live stream? Thank you. So we now move to the final item of the agenda which I presume