Agenda and minutes

To receive apologies of absence.

An apology/Apologies for absence was/were received from Councillors Stephen Davies, Pearson and Tucker.

To receive declarations of interest.

There were none.

To approve the Minutes of the meetings held on 20 April 2023.

RESOLVED That the Minutes of the meetings held on 20 April 2023 were approved as a correct record.

The Chair of the Committee will answer questions from members of the public submitted in accordance with the Council’s procedures.

There were none.

See Agenda Item 4 for the deadline for submission.

There were none.

To present to the Strategy and Resources Committee the final outturn position against the General Fund revenue budgets for 2022/23.

The Accountancy Manager introduced the report and confirmed that the Committee was largely being asked to note the report but there was a request to agree some slippage for the Capital Programme. The Accountancy Manager drew Members attention to the following:

• Page 14 highlighted an underspend for the general fund revenue position of £1.272m which included some areas of service variance which were largely in line with Quarter 3 reports.
• There were some year end changes including additional VAT income for The Pulse, additional investment income due to interest rate changes and additional government grants. The full breakdown could be found in the appendices.
• Page 17 showed a breakdown of the allocation for the underspend.
• Page 19 included information about General Fund write offs which the S151 Officer had agreed to.
• General fund general reserve balance remained the same at £2.169m.
• Page 21 included information about the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) position which had already been reported to Housing Committee at their June meeting and showed that there was a net underspend of £0.33m.
• The allocation of the HRA underspend was shown on page 23.
• HRA reserve movements were included on page 24, there had been an overall increase to the HRA earmarked reserves of £649k which included a transfer of just over £1m for the provision of repayment of debt.
• HRA general reserves had reduced to £4.118m which was a better position than expected at budget setting.
• The capital programme was included in Appendix H and I.

Councillor Hurst asked whether the underspend reported represented a lack of resources or staffing. The Accountancy Manager confirmed that the underspend related to those central areas e.g. investment income and business rates pool gain neither of which had an impact on service delivery. With the capital programme it was confirmed that they would expect to see some changes with timing and was not due to not having capacity to deliver.

Councillor Robinson asked for further information about the estate redevelopment reserve. The Accountancy Manager confirmed that the reserve was put a side a number of years ago and had never had any commitments against it which was why it was deemed suitable to repurpose it to the HRA General Reserves. Councillor Robinson also asked for information about the underspend of £513k on refurbished bathrooms. The Accountancy Manager advised that she would need to check the specifics however advised that there had been a reworking of what could be delivered with the contractor capacity and the work programme had been reprofiled due to priorities. She confirmed she would take this away and respond to Councillor Robinson with more information.

Councillor Turner asked whether the money had been received for the purchase of properties due to the Ukranian Scheme. The Accountancy Manager confirmed that the Local Authority Housing Fund had been received and that the acquisition of properties had started.

Proposed by Councillor Bennett and seconded by Councillor Ross.

Councillor Bennett thanked the Accountancy Manager for the clear report. Councillor Ross confirmed that the  ...  view the full minutes text for item SRC.006

This report sets out the proposed Household Support Fund delivery plan for 2023/24 and requests that authority is delegated for the delivery of the plan to the Strategic Director for Communities.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Manager introduced the report and confirmed that the County Council had provided a years worth of funding which allowed SDC to put together an annual plan. The Cost of Living Working Group had oversight of the fund. They had received smaller iterations of the fund in the past so had already built up a good delivery network with partners in the community. There is criteria for how the fund can be used and had to be allocated against certain elements including food, energy and water.

Councillor Craig asked whether SDC were aware that a Community Hub was due to open in Berkeley called GL13. The Community Health and Wellbeing Manager confirmed that they had been able to provide some funding to GL11 to help support GL13.

Councillor Robinson asked whether it was possible for other supermarket vouchers to be provided for those who many not live near to certain supermarkets. The Community Health and Wellbeing Manager confirmed that they had purchased Morrisons and Iceland vouchers for the first time in order to ensure that there were additional options for residents.

In response to Councillor Hurst the Community Health and Wellbeing Manager confirmed that the fund was provided by the government to the County Council who distributed it across the County.

In response to Councillor Ross the Community Health and Wellbeing Manager confirmed that a members briefing report could be provided to members of the Housing Committee as well as the Community Services & Licensing Committee.

The Chair, Councillor Braun stated that it felt like the situation with the Cost of Living Crisis was worsening and asked whether they had seen any changes to support  this or whether the situation was starting to stabilise.  The Community Health and Wellbeing Manager advised that the data they had received had been contradictory as the Community Hubs were reporting high numbers whereas the foodbank usage seemed to have reduced. They wanted to ensure that the food voucher system was not masking poverty and that people were being referred so that they could access necessary help.

Proposed by Councillor Aldam and seconded by Councillor Layfield.

Councillor Layfield acknowledged the amount of work the Community Health and Wellbeing Manager had done to help support households and was pleased to see Homestart and financial advice provision being funded.

Councillor Aldam advised that the Cost of Living Working Group was really effective and that the Council were carrying out important work in helping to supporting its partners.

On being put to the vote, the Motion was carried unanimously.

The purpose of this report is to seek approval from the Council to bring Stratford Park Leisure Centre (SPLC) inhouse creating a Leisure Services Team with effect from 1st November 2024.

The Head of Community Services introduced the report and gave a brief history of how the recommended decision had come about. It was advised that:

• In December 2021 Community Services & Licensing (CS&L) Committee delegated authority to the Strategic Director of Communities in consultation with the Chair of CS&L to explore a Local Authority Trading Company and report back to CS&L Committee.
• In March 2023 Officers were ready to report back to CS&L Committee with a fully costed LATC Business Case. However the HMRC changed its ruling on VAT and Local Authority leisure provision.
• Following the updated HMRC ruling on VAT Officers tasked the consultant to explore the impact of the ruling and compare this against the LATC business case.
• The updated ruling meant that Local Authority Leisure was classed as a non-business activity and this had a large impact as the council would be able to keep VAT on a large proportion of the income and would save approximately £190k on goods and services purchased. This would not be possible if the Council proceeded with the LATC model.
• The evaluation scores had been included in Appendix 2 and the priorities had been set and agreed by the Task and Finish Group. Before the HMRC ruling the scoring for LATC and in-house models were equal and all other options were discounted at this stage.
• Following the VAT ruling the models were considered again against the options appraisal and priorities.
• The review following the VAT ruling was outlined in Appendix 3.
• The in-house model came out cheaper once the information was reviewed following the VAT ruling changes. 
• It was an Officer decision to change the recommendation based upon the evidence.
• Lessons learnt from research into the LATC model would be included as part of the in-house model including ensuring that a leisure services manager is recruited to work towards set targets, create a leisure specification which will state how the centre will operate and include Key Performance Indicators.
• Performance would be reported back to CS&L and Audit and Standards Committees.

Councillor Smith asked whether there was a chance that the ruling on VAT by HMRC would be reversed. The Head of Community Services advised that this would be unlikely and that Councillors would need to use the information that was available to them at the current time in order to make a decision.

In response to Councillor Green, who queried why the recommendation had been changed, the Strategic Director of Resources confirmed that the Task and Finish Group had clearly set out the priorities and scoring for options which meant they could re-evaluate the options again once the HMRC ruling had changed. Officers needed to make sure that Members had up to date information in order to make their decisions and it would have not been right to allow Members to make a decision based on factors that were not correct with regards the financials. None of the weighting had been changed but the changes to the  ...  view the full minutes text for item SRC.008

To provide an update on work carried out to date and set out a proposal for future work.

The Strategic Director of Resources introduced the report which provided an update on the Councils actions in terms of Community Wealth Building. In October 2018 there had been a Motion to Council to support local wealth building, since then the principles of community wealth building had been embedded into the Councils strategic plans. The report detailed specific actions which had already been taken however they were requesting that a specialist was procured in order to progress the work further.

In response to Councillor Turner the Strategic Director of Resources confirmed that historically Stroud District Council had done quite well with regards local spend and that last year there had been a large increase in capital spend which wasn’t local so the local spend totals had dropped.

In response to Councillor Craig the Strategic Director of Resources advised that the investment in the principle of local banking through an allocation of £50k of Business Rates Pilot funding in the Avon Mutual Project was a purchase of initial investor shares. The report to Committee in 2019 made it clear that the Council should consider the £50k as a grant and it wasn’t currently held in any of the budgets. He confirmed that he would request that an update was provided to Members on their work towards developing a Community Bank.

Councillor Layfield asked if they had considered doing any work in partnership with Credit Union. The Strategic Director of Resources confirmed that they had funded Credit Union and he would be happy to request an update from them.

Proposed by Councillor Layfield and seconded by Councillor Bennett.

The Chair, Councillor Braun stated that it would be interesting to look at how they can take the work already being carried out to the next level to keep wealth and prosperity within the district, help support young people to stay in the District and support local businesses.

Councillor Bennett stated that the case for community wealth building was even stronger now and supported the recommendation to procure a specialist.

Councillor Layfield echoed comments made by Councillor Bennett.

On being put to the vote, the Motion was carried unanimously.

To appoint two performance monitors for Civic Year 2023-24.

Performance monitors carry out a scrutiny role and are typically a member of the opposition political group or an independent Councillor. These appointed Members will examine the work of the Council and report back to Committee on the progress made against the Council plan.

Councillors Gordon Craig and Stephen Davies were appointed as Performance Monitors.

There were no questions.

There were no questions.

Councillor Turner asked whether there was anything Stroud District Council could do to ensure that concerns around national grid capacity were resolved. The Chief Executive advised that reassurance had been provided that the National Grid were looking to change the way they worked to reduce hold ups. At the moment they were waiting to see what changes would be made at a national level and would continue to review this as part of the GEGJC.

There were no questions.

There were no questions.

There were no questions.

To consider the work programme.

RESOLVEDTo note the Work Programme.