Agenda item - Chair's Communication

32.1 The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we are here at this special meeting to scrutinise the draft plans of the 2026/27 budget ahead of the budget going to Cabinet on 12th February and budget Council on 26th February.

The scrutiny team are in the process of arranging a joint special scrutiny committee meeting to allow us to scrutinise the final budget. This is planned for Monday 16th February and details will be sent out to members shortly. So we will have a second opportunity for budget scrutiny.

The minutes of this meeting and any specific comments or recommendations made by committee members will be shared with the Cabinet to inform their planning.

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 specific to their service areas, and I’d like to welcome them to the meeting. 

We will start the meeting with an 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 briefly talk about their portfolios and then take questions.

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.

Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee is due to begin at 17:00 and therefore we will need to finish this meeting by 16:30 and so will need to stick to timings to ensure the next meeting can start at the advertised time. Can I therefore please request that both those asking and answering questions are as brief and to the point as possible.

In the interests of time and to ensure that everyone gets the chance to contribute, I’m going to ask members to refrain from asking multiple questions and to ask one question 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. 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.

Please can members keep to questions that will be relevant to the city, rather than asking questions that are ward specific. These questions will be referred for a written answer after the meeting.

I will look to hold a ten-minute break at an appropriate point roughly halfway through the meeting.