Agenda item - Chair's Communications

48.1    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 at the details of the budget plans ahead of the Cabinet meeting on 12^th February and budget Council on 26^th February. We are joined by Cllr Jacob Taylor, Deputy Leader of the Council and cabinet member for Finance & City Regeneration, and John Hooton, Interim Director of Property and Finance, 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.  

We will start the meeting with a brief overview of the budget plans from Cllr Taylor. I will then ask each Cabinet Member in turn, supported by Cllr Taylor and by the relevant officers, to take questions on plans within their portfolio. 

Although we only have one item on the agenda, this is an important subject for scrutiny, so I imagine there will be 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. There will be ample opportunity for members to state their position on plans and propose alternative savings to Budget Council; the purpose of this meeting is to get more information on the budget plans, so I do want encourage members to ask questions rather than make statements. 

Please note that any questions relating to a specific ward will be referred to officers outside of the meeting to ensure the committee is focussed on implications for all wards. In the interests of time and to ensure that everyone gets to contribute, I’m going to ask members to refrain from asking multiple questions and to ask one question only to each Cabinet Member. If you have more questions for the Cabinet Member, and if we have time, I will come back to you once everyone has had the opportunity to ask something. I do want to give all members the opportunity to ask everything they want to, but I need to be mindful that we have many service areas to cover and only limited time. I will move on to the next topic if I feel we need to, even if there are questions still to be asked. 

We are in the process of setting up another special budget scrutiny committee in February where we will have the opportunity to scrutinise the budget at a later stage in the process which will include the HRA and any changes that has been made to the budget before it goes to Council on the 26^th February for approval.