Agenda item - Chair's Communications

60.1    The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we are holding the second special Place Overview & Scrutiny meeting to look at the budget. The minutes of this meeting and any specific comments made by committee members will be shared with Cabinet. 

At the last special budget meeting, we looked at the draft plans. Today, we will be looking at the final budget plans being proposed to Full Council on the 26^th February for approval. We have already scrutinised much of the budget so today we will be focussing on changes made to the budget since our last meeting. This includes the Housing Revenue Account which had not been part of the papers last time.  

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 is only able to join us online today. They 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 all to the meeting.  

We will start with Cllr Taylor who will give a brief overview of the changes made to the budget since our last meeting. Following that, I’d like to open up for questions on the HRA first as our colleagues from Housing need to leave early. Then I will open up to questions on everything else.   

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.