The Scrutiny Board (Strategy and Resources) met to discuss the council's financial health, transformation programme, medium-term financial strategy, and work programme for the coming year. The board reviewed the financial health report for the first quarter of 2025/26, which highlighted a projected overspend, and discussed strategies to address it. Members also received updates on the Core Business Transformation Programme and provided feedback on the Medium Term Financial Strategy and Organisation Plan.

Financial Health Report

The board reviewed the financial health report for Quarter 1 of 2025/26, which provided an update on the revenue budget, Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), and Housing Revenue Account (HRA). The report, which was to be considered by the Executive Board on 17 September 2025, indicated a projected overspend due to demand pressures in adult social care and children and families services.

The board discussed a more detailed approach to financial monitoring, agreeing to include periodic coverage of directorates where overspending was projected. This would allow officers from those directorates to answer service-specific questions. It was proposed that the Director of Adults and Health would attend the October meeting, and the Director of Children and Families would attend the November meeting.

Medium Term Financial Strategy and Organisation Plan

The board received an update on the council's 2025 Organisation Plan refresh and the development of a more integrated approach linked to the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS). The 2025 refresh of the Organisation Plan sought to develop a clearer link to the financial resources available to the council and the priorities in meeting the Leeds Ambition. The MTFS aligns the strategic priorities within the Organisation Plan with the need to deliver savings and balance the budget.

Key themes influencing the refreshed approach, focused on financial sustainability, included:

• Revenue generation
• Locality working
• Early help/prevention
• Organisation effectiveness and efficiency

The board was given the opportunity to comment on both the MTFS and Organisation Plan with a view to providing pre-decision input into the development of this more integrated approach to budgets and delivering organisational priorities.

Core Business Transformation Programme

The board received an update on the progress of the Core Business Transformation (CBT) Programme¹, which aims to modernise and transform the council's core support service functions, including finance, HR, payroll, and procurement. The programme is driven by the need to replace outdated systems with modern, cloud-based technologies.

The report provided assurance that the technology implementations pertaining to each workstream were continuing to be effectively managed to achieve the outcomes articulated in the CBT business cases. It also confirmed that risks and issues were being effectively managed with a view to achieving successful implementation within agreed timescales and budget.

Work Programme

The board considered its work programme for the 2025/26 municipal year. The programme reflected known items of scrutiny activity, including performance and budget monitoring, and identified Budget and Policy Framework items. The board agreed to review and discuss the work programme at each public meeting during the year.

The board noted the minutes of the Executive Board meeting held on 16 July 2025 and considered any matters where specific scrutiny activity may also be warranted.