Agenda item - Chair's Communications

3.1      The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we are here as a joint meeting of both the Place and People Overview & Scrutiny Committees as part of the budget scrutiny process. We are joined by Cllr Jacob Taylor, Deputy Leader of the Council and cabinet member for Finance & City Regeneration, and Nigel Manvell, the council’s Chief Financial Officer, who will be talking to us about the budget and then taking questions from members.

They will explain more shortly but at the moment we are still awaiting more details from the government to inform the budget setting process, so the report is high level budget thinking, the legal and financial background to the budget. The minutes of the meeting and any specific comments made will be shared with the Cabinet.

Our separate scheduled committee meetings for January will include an agenda item where we will have more details of the budget relating to the remit of each committee.

Although we only have one item on the agenda, there are a lot of us here this afternoon and so we will have a lot of questions to get through. Can I therefore please request that both those asking and answering questions are as brief and to the point as possible. We want everyone who wishes to contribute to have the opportunity.