The Scrutiny Committee of Vale of White Horse District Council is scheduled to meet on Monday, 29 September 2025, to review the council's financial performance and consider its work schedule. The committee is expected to discuss the financial outturn for 2024/25, including revenue and capital expenditure, and to review the scrutiny work programme for upcoming meetings.

Here are the topics that the committee is scheduled to discuss:

Financial Outturn 2024/25

The Scrutiny Committee is expected to review the council's financial performance for the year 2024/25. According to the report pack, the committee is recommended to note the overall outturn position of the council, as well as the outturn of individual service areas.

The report from Anna Winship, Head of Finance, notes that the council had a working budget of £22.7 million, against which net expenditure at year end was £22.8 million, an adverse variation of £0.1 million. However, increased returns on treasury management investment income resulted in a favourable variance of £1.5 million.

The report pack includes a summary of major variances against the revenue budget. For example, the Finance department had a favourable variance of £292,000, which relates to court fee income being considerably higher than the budget in Revenues and Benefits. Housing and Environment had an adverse variance of £624,000, mainly because garden waste income was down against budget following the introduction of the permit scheme from April 2025.

The report also details capital expenditure for 2024/25, which totalled £18.1 million, 66% of the working budget. Key variances include slippage on works at The Beacon ¹, and the White Horse Leisure and Tennis Centre decarbonisation project. The report pack also notes that £0.5 million of additional business rates income has been moved to an earmarked revenue reserve as a cushion against volatility in future business rates income.

Scrutiny Work Programme

The committee is also scheduled to review its work programme and dates for all Vale and Joint scrutiny meetings. The work programme lists upcoming agenda items for future meetings, including:

• Planning enforcement update in November 2025
• Decarbonisation projects lessons learned report
• Housing Delivery Strategy
• Grounds maintenance depot
• Council-owned Housing Provision
• Community assets
• Integrated Care Board partnerships
• Council Plan performance report

The work programme notes that the items under consideration are subject to being withdrawn, added to, or rearranged without further notice.

Update on Recommendations

The committee will also receive any updates emerging from the recommendations made in previous meetings.

Minutes of the Last Meeting

The committee will be asked to approve the minutes of the meeting held on 30 June 2025. The minutes include a discussion of the Annual Delivery Plan 2025-26, and an update on relationships with tenants and service charges. The minutes record that Gabriel Mclaughlin, a Property Surveyor at the council, was thanked for assisting in creating an amicable resolution with affected tenants.