Agenda item - Chair's Communications

3.1      The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we are holding a special Place Overview & Scrutiny meeting as part of the budget scrutiny process. The minutes of this meeting and any specific comments made by committee members will be shared with the Cabinet to inform their planning. 

We will be looking in depth at the details of the budget plans ahead of the Cabinet meeting on 13^th February. 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. We are also joined by Cabinet members and officers who are on hand to help with any questions and I’d like to welcome them to the meeting. Cllr Williams can only stay until 2.30pm so please can we have any questions specifically on housing first. 

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.