Transcript

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first meeting of the Cabinet of this Council. I would like to remind members that this meeting is being webcast live today, so please remain seated when you are called to speak and please remember to turn your microphone off after speaking. I'd also like to ask you to switch your mobile phones off or to silent. And we'll move to agenda item number one, which is apologies and declarations of interest. Hazel? Thank you, Chair. I've received apologies from Councillors Amos and Councillor Wharton. Are there any other apologies today from anybody? No? Okay. I now call for details of any declarations of interest. Remember, you only need to declare any interest where it relates to an item on today's agenda. Are there any? No? Okay. We'll move on to item two, public participation. Have we got any public participation today? No, Chair. No one is registered to speak. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to agenda item three, confirmation of the minutes. So, I acknowledge that this is the first meeting of Cabinet of our new administration. So, therefore, we are not members of the previous Cabinet. So, they met on March the 20th, 2025. May I still see and sign his correct record of the minutes? Has everyone agreed with that? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As Councillor Wharton has given his apologies today, I'll invite Councillor Taylor to introduce the report, to move the recommendations in paragraph one, on item number four. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. This report looks back on... This report looks back on the financial performance for the previous financial year, 24, 25. we are all aware local government and particularly authorities who deliver social care services are under severe financial strain this council has seen consistent pressures on all demand led areas particularly in adult social care and children's social care and home to school transport our cabinet will need to make some tough decisions to address the consequences of what we believe to be the previous to administration irresponsible spending i move recommendation 180 as set out in paragraph one of the report before i ask phil rookers for chief financial officer to give further information do i have a seconder i second that yeah i will now invite phil rook uh chief finance officer to take us through the key points of the report thank you morning all i'll just touch on a few highlights in the report in terms of that so it does look back in the 24 25 financial year which was a really tough year for the council with the demands on particular social care homeschool transport budgets in terms of that the council the end of year position was a 6.2 million overspend on a 433 million net revenue budget which was about 1.4 percent so so that was a lot pleased more pleasing than what we were forecasting in december which was a 14 million overspend so thank many thanks to everyone across the organization that they've really focused on to reduce spend and that's probably in the latter half of the year and probably to be fair as to what was going into efs to really focus to try and get that down which was good the reductions were largely one-off though unfortunately in terms of e and i use of public health grants support children and adults and from an increased income from treasury management activities in terms of that the report goes into significant detail for each directorate and the causes for the variances when i touch on the savings program for 24 25 there was a 37.2 million savings program one of the largest ones that the council has had and pleasingly to say we delivered 27.6 million of that 72 percent of the target and that's shown in the chart four of the report in the individual directorate in terms of that i think in terms of table three in the report shows clearly the 10.8 million savings that were not delivered when i touch on the financial resilience and our reserves and balances the council's general balances have been reviewed and increased to 19.2 percent this is around 4.4 of our net revenues budget when we touch on usable reserves they've reduced from 105.1 to 93.8 however some of these reserves are for a specific purpose and not available to manage the risks that we have going forward the risk reserve that we have has gone down to the start of the year at 43.5 and has reduced to 28.7 and given the the pressures in the 25 26 budget largely from increases in national insurance for providers and national living wage that were unfunded by the government that's caused pressure in terms of in terms of that and we have to use when we set the budget in february 15 million to support that budget so that risk reserve will reduce even further i think when we look on the financial statements and the annual governance statements and pension fund accounts we published those in early june and many thanks to the finance team who really worked hard to get that done and dusted it's a statutory deadline by the 30th of june which we were very ahead and we met that so the focus now can be looking forward instead of looking backwards auditing governance committee reviewed the accounts of their meeting on the 17th of june and made some comments on that so that's been done and there was the external audit was a meeting so there were just lots of questions from members around that and the pensions committee reviewed the pension fund accounts on tuesday of this week as well in terms of that so that's a really big undertaking because hopefully as a county council with the pension fund we've got net assets of just over four billion when i look forward looking forward the csr comprehensive spending review was published on the 11th of june and local government will get a three-year settlement which is pleasing but when you look at the devil in the detail our core spending powers increased mainly from impacts of council tax rises assumed for the next three years and that'll be at five percent so the challenge is still there in terms of that one of the biggest concerns we have as this council is our high needs deficit and we ended the year at 98.2 million deficit that i sat off the balance sheet at the moment on friday the government government announced that the statutory override will be extended for a further two years to march 20 28 but this just kicks the can down the road effectively so from from that that area that is the biggest concern to us one of the areas that we'll have to look at there's going to be a white paper that comes in autumn with the strategy from the government how they're going to resolve this situation because essentially if you look at our dsg deficit if you look at march 28 i would have say that's going to be around 300 million which is an absolute massive amount of money i think finally i do welcome the fair funding review that was announced on on friday which looks at the relative needs forms for local authorities so they've uprated the formula in terms of that which is pleasing but we haven't got the other half of the detail yet so effectively the devil will be in the detail and obviously i'll come back to cabinet and update all members around what that means for our budget for 25 25 26 and 26 27 onwards but it's going to be very clear that this is going to be a really tough year for us going forward and our finances are fragile and ultimately this is not uncommon for worcestershire it's through all county councils but there's a lot of detail in the report there but i'm happy to take any questions but i think that just gives you a flavour of the challenges that we're facing thank you um i now call for any other speakers to contribute have we got any no okay members of the cabinet no okay right okay i can see we have other councillors present um and i'll ask if anyone wants to ask a question and then invite them to speak okay councillor kent yeah thank you leader and uh welcome to your first cabinet meeting um i think looking through these papers and having discussed it with the financial officer as well i think the work that's been carried out in the last quarter particularly in terms of meeting the savings and everything else that were done needs to be recognized i think looking at the report i find um deep concern with what your uh deputy leader said in terms of introducing this item i know he's he's substituting for somebody who's away but i would just like to read some of the sections of the report that you're actually commenting on because i would like to query what is the irresponsible spending that he refers to is that in adults children's or home to school where the overspends are um i would read the one section here within the report which is section three which is this year has continued to be challenging for local government and the council with consistent pressures on all our demand-led areas particularly adult social care children's social care and home to school transport and this is fundamentally due to a lack of government action in terms of providing the relevant funding that we need to meet the legislation that's in place for specific areas so for to be accused of irresponsible spending i'd really like that to be detailed if that's possible if you're going to make that statement can you please list the spending that you regard is irresponsible okay uh thank you for your question i understand the importance of it and i think we should be getting back to you on that because we need to speak to our cabinet member for finance and actually discuss this with the um with phil councillor allen yes uh good morning council um thank you very much uh thank you for the report phil i i obviously it's taken an awful lot of working effort and i do appreciate it um just looking at the chief executive's introduction i noticed we're talking about the worcestershire on demand boss which is something i'm very much in favor of and um as it states in 2025 in fact it was in january 2025 we uh expanded it to allow our 22 000 veterans and members of the armed forces are based here to use the service for free on production of an id car do we have any more details can you flesh it out a little bit is that possible please and then i'll come back to you okay uh thanks for your question and again i understand the importance of this we can get back to you but this is a question aimed at the previous administration so we need to delve deeper into that and then we will get back to you on that thank you okay that's very kind of you thank you um then perhaps i can ask you looking at looking at this that uh you'll consider going forward to continue to support our our veterans who have served this country so well thank you we we always support our veterans that's one of our um policies within our party and our group thank you okay councillor hardman thank you very much um just to pick up on um my leader's uh um point on irresponsible spending uh i'm looking forward to hearing the answer where the irresponsible spending was in the adult communities because we substantially in the last budget which i can remind you because you voted for um increased the the adults budget and we've come out with a 3.7 uh million pound overspend which i regard as frankly um being an outstanding performance by adults because it is extremely hard to uh guess the service pressures and that's what you do when you set a budget in february you're having a guess on what the acute performance is going to be like what the reablement performance is going to be like the 90 day um will you meet your 90 day reablement target and all those factors go into the adult and community's budget so i do think that you need to just talk to your deputy leader because i think of 3.7 million pound overspend while it is an overspend in adults is not irresponsible we we put more money into learning disabilities we put more money into physical disabilities and we put more money into the prevention agenda because if we hadn't have done that and worked in partnership with our health colleagues the overspend would have been considerably more so let me assure you this is a very good out turn in adults and communities and what you are trying to do is to paint a history of failure and it is untrue thank you councillor hardman same response to your question i understand the importance of it we will get back to you in detail on it however as you know i was actually in the former administration and i actually witnessed a lot of things were going on and i do believe that you did spend irrationally thank you councillor boatwright green thank you an observation and a question really observation is uh given that the uh debate we had about um uh attendance um and people's illnesses i hope no one's ill today because obviously i'm assuming you'd be calling for them to resign um but just on a question um the going forward so actually looking not backwards but let's look into the future here one of the areas where i feel like this council has really not kind of pulled its weight is looking at kind of invest to save i feel like there's been a lot of opportunities where we could have done that and in particular in areas of education where we've got 1.5 million pounds a month going out on taxis is invest to save something that we're going to see a huge drive on in this administration where we can start to actually build what we need so that we can actually save money to ensure that we're actually bringing down costs overall thank you councillor boatwright green is that two questions okay well thank you for the observation and as i can see there are plenty of you councillors here and as we all know if you attend other meetings it does actually push your attendance record up without being officially at a meeting so that's how a lot of people did that last administration secondly for what you just asked me uh it does relate to the previous administration also in going forward which we can't comment on because we haven't got our cabinet member here to actually do that for you but we will get back to you and i do understand the importance of it thank you councillor jenkins thank you um i think my the answer might be similar to previous ones but i'll ask anyway um a deputy leader spoke about uh tough decisions which there certainly are um i'd be interested to know kind of in particular what areas you'll be focused on when we'll be hearing what those tough decisions are and how we as the rest of the council can be involved in supporting them thank you again yes always important questions and i thank you for that um but we will be setting our targets and policies very soon so you will be hearing what offers from that and we do look forward to working with you on that councillor may thank you very much indeed our spend was around statutory requirements historically and our corporate plan linked to our corporate plan plan and priorities will you be reviewing the corporate plan please we will be reviewing all of them so thank you for your question there councillor may councillor miller thank you leader um i terribly sorry but i did find your um comment disingenuous to say that attendance to any meeting is to push your um your percentage up of tendency i come to meetings to be informed for what is happening within the council so i can inform my residents to what the council is doing not to get any score or any percentage in my attendance so i think there is an apology um required in that um court um court thank you thank you councillor miller it's not aimed at everybody but it was a very big opposite of observation sorry um that i observed while being in the conservative party um and it was actually told to me by members of the party and my colleagues at the time to boost my attendance would be to do that and i agree with you why should i do that when i'm here to serve the public thank you we have um anybody else right okay okay that's the end of the debate uh councillor bell uh she won't be able to vote because she wasn't here um for the debate earlier thank you so is cabinet in recommendation and agreement uh for the recommendations that we've set out thank you thank you that ends the meeting and i thank you all for your attendance today the council's just to explain that this is still being broadcast while we arranged for it to be switched off so you may want to leave the chamber if you're having any private discussions press your button to get the camera on you