Agenda item

Resolved: that the report be noted.

4.1      David Austin (Head of Corporate Resources) introduced the report, the following key points were noted:

·         Local Government was on a journey of austerity that started in 2010 and would continue until at least 2020 (and likely into the mid-2020s).

·         There were an unusual number of uncertainties, pressures and risks in planning the Council’s future finances. There had been a number of changes (and further changes were anticipated) around council tax and the social care precept.

·         The Council was still awaiting additional information about the funding review, it was anticipated that there would be further changes to the new homes bonus.

·         There was a possibility that there would be changes to the Better Care Fund.

·         There were also upcoming changes to the pooling of business rates in London, as well as potential longer term changes to demographics and Lewisham’s potential future tax base.

·         The Council’s target for savings in 2018/19 was £22m, which included £5m of savings from 2017/18 that had not been achieved.

·         It was proving increasingly challenging to deliver savings.

·         The Council was currently forecasting £13m of overspend for 2017/18, including £7m of unachieved savings.

·         Savings that had been agreed were taking longer to deliver.

·         It was felt that the strategic challenge set by the Lewisham Future Programme was correct but the current focus was on delivering savings that had already been identified.

·         Reserves would need to be used for the end of year overspend, as well as the unachieved savings target. This figure was currently in the region of £30m.

4.2      David Austin responded to questions from the Committee, the following key points were noted:

·         The £30m that would be taken from reserves was made up of £13m overspend from 2017/18 and the shortfall in the savings for 2018/19.

·         The current level of reserves was £149m. £79m was committed. The other £70m had some commitments against it – but it was earmarked for certain projects that would have to be cancelled if the level of savings required next year was not achieved.

·         There were very few areas of the Council that were not trying to make savings.

·         The biggest single area of overspending was children’s services, which represented £7m of the existing £13m overspend. £1m of the overspend in children’s services was as a result of unachieved savings.

·         Some additional spending was also required in children’s services following the Ofsted inspection. Over time the changes would produce efficiencies.

·         Another area that was overspending was the environment division. The delay in introducing the fortnightly collections and changes necessary to improve fleet vehicles had created a £1m overspend.

·         Adult services also had some unachieved savings but they were in a better financial positon than children’s services because of the nationally recognised pressure on adults’ services and the additional funding that had been made available.

·         Changes to IT were producing efficiency to officers’ work. Better data was also available about the impact of decisions.

·         There were also efficiencies being found through IT for in the customer facing aspects of the Council’s services.

·         There was some good news in the savings programme, but not at the scale of the challenges that were being faced. Joining the London business rate pool should be beneficial for Lewisham and might provide Lewisham with an extra £3m a year.

·         There were minor risks to the London pooling arrangements failing. All boroughs had to agree to the pooling for it to take effect. However, leaders of councils in London had all agreed to the new process so the political will was in place and it was left to officers to manage the process.

·         There was a variable definition of what constituted statutory and non-statutory services.

·         The Council provided about £15m of purely voluntary services – most of the remainder of the provision of services was a matter of interpretation and degree.

·         There were £13m of completely un-earmarked reserves. Of the earmarked reserves, some were being used to build up funds to meet future contractual financial commitments, some funds were allocated to schools and there were some funds for paying insurance balances.

·         There was also funding allocated to: the transformation programme; potential redundancies as the organisation downsized and outstanding pension liabilities from legacy organisations.

4.3      Emma Talbot (Head of Planning) introduced savings proposal P3 – the following key points were noted:

·         The planning service had previously proposed a saving of £240k for 2018/19, made up of £200k of income and £40k to be found from a minor restructure.

·         Since the saving had been proposed, officers had been working on the income part of the proposal. However, the Government had proposed an increase of planning fees by 20%. In order to accept this increase councils had to commit not to reduce their base planning budgets.

·         Legislation had been laid out to implement these changes and it was anticipated that they would come into place next year.

·         Officers were looking at generating additional surplus, which meant that the service would not only achieve the £200k it had originally set out, but also an additional £70k, which would more than offset the saving it would not make from the restructure.

·         Income for non-statutory services provided £370k of income last year and it was anticipated that it would make £450k this year. Therefore, the projection of making £200k was relatively conservative.

·         The service was looking at using charges to cover staffing costs.

·         Developers were positive about paying for improved service delivery.

·         It was unlikely that the planning service would reach a zero net position in terms of costs and income.

·         Running the service as professionally as possible meant that people would be willing to pay for quality delivery.

·         The planning service was also intending to ensure that it continued to offer some services for free.

4.4      Emma Talbot responded to questions from the Committee, the following key points were noted:

·         There was currently a maximum £150 charge for an appointment with a duty planner (it was anticipated that this would rise by 20%).

·         The charge provided advice about plans for changes to a property, which were reviewed against existing policies to determine whether they were likely to be approved. Applicants were also invited to a meeting to discuss the plans with their agent (if they had one) to get advice about how best to make their plans compliant.

·         The appointment also provided the opportunity for officers to encourage people to speak to their neighbours- and to engage quality architects.

·         A review of the delivery of the service indicated that it had improved the quality of plans being submitted and increased satisfaction.

·         For a larger planning applications there was a longer process, which involved a series of meetings with a dedicated planner.

·         Alongside these changes, the Council would provide additional information online about what people needed planning permission for.

·         Advice given to applicants was reviewed and quality controlled by managers in order to ensure that it was consistent.

·         Pre-application advice was given carefully and always related to agreed policy.

·         It was made clear to applicants that pre-application advice was not a final decision and that the advice was not binding on the Council.

·         The planning service regularly shared best practice and advice with other councils.

·         After every planning committee meeting, there was a debrief with all officers in the service about the outcome of the meeting.

·         The Council did not want to introduce charges for very minor services. In some cases, looking at many small scale changes would not be cost effective.

·         The planning service intended to do more work to manage expectations about planning advice and decisions.

·         The government had ring-fenced planning expenditure for the remainder of the parliament. It had strongly encouraged all local planning authorities in the country to submit to the new terms. This meant that the base budget for the planning service could not be cut.

·         The service was considering which budgets planning related and support services were allocated to.

·         There was an increasing scale of charges for advice on applications of different sizes (depending of the number of units being proposed in a new development).

·         Creating a schedule of charges for small scale schemes (including homeowners) on a sliding scale would likely be very labour intensive to manage.

·         Payment by developers for planning services did not impinge on the independence of the planning service nor the professionalism of officers.

·         When there were problems with developers schemes which were not progressing positively as part of a planning performance agreement the planning agreement could be terminated and this had  happened previously.

·         It was not currently proposed to change the statement of community involvement in order to cease publishing neighbour letters about planning permissions.

4.5      In the Committee discussion the following key point was also noted:

·         Some other councils were charging more for their duty planning service.

4.6      Resolved: that the report be noted.