Agenda item

To review the Committee’s recommendations tracker.  The Committee information bulletin is attached as Annex A.

Declarations of Interest:

None.

Witnesses:

Nikki O’Connor, Finance Manager (Assets, Investment & Accounting)

Phil Triggs, Strategic Manager – Pension Fund & Treasury

Key Points Raised During the Discussion

1.    In relation to A55/12 (Finance Dashboard), the Chairman informed the Committee that a presentation on the Finance Dashboard would be given to Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 30 January 2014.  Members of Audit & Governance Committee would be invited to attend.

2.    In relation to A1/13 (Business Planning 2013-2018), the Strategic Manager – Pension Fund & Treasury provided an update to the Committee.  The main issue at the meeting on 1 February 2013 was a recommendation for the approval of trigger points for reversing the current position on internal borrowing.  Regular discussions on this had been held with the Chief Finance Officer.  There was a reluctance to rely on trigger points when a wider range of factors would need to be considered.  For example, market commentary and consultant’s advice would also need to be considered.  Trigger points could spur conversations but should not be relied on exclusively.

3.    Further to A1/13 (Business Planning 2013-2018), the Chairman informed the Committee that Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee would not be repeating its scrutiny of the draft Treasury Strategy in 2014 and asked if Audit & Governance Committee would like to review the Treasury Strategy before the Council sets Council Tax for 2014/15.  The Committee agreed to hold an informal meeting to consider the Strategy early in 2014 (Recommendations tracker ref: A34/13).

4.    In relation to A3/13 (PAMS), it was noted that an update and demonstration was on the agenda for the day’s meeting.

5.    In relation to A26/13 (Council Tax), the Finance Manager (Assets, Investment & Accounting) informed the Committee that the Council was regularly receiving monitoring information on collection rates from five to six Borough and District Councils but not from the others.  David Harmer, as Chairman of the Welfare Reform Group, was encouraging dual-hatted Members to talk to their Borough and District Council Finance Officers.  Other local groups were also pursuing this as a priority.  Several Borough and District Councils do not currently have the right systems to allow them to provide the information that we require on a monthly basis.  A dual-hatted Member of the Committee disputed the suggestion that Councils do not have the information and pointed to his own Borough Council that had spent months setting up the systems to collate the information.  It was proposed that the issue was more to do with transmission of the information to the County Council.  The Finance Manager (Assets, Investment & Accounting) suggested that extrapolation of the data which had been sent through to the County Council shows that under-recovery of Business Rates and Council Tax is limited.  The Chairman agreed to write to the Leader of the Council about concerns over the sharing of data on Council Tax and Business Rates collection (Recommendations tracker ref: A35/13).

Actions/Further Information to be Provided:

The recommendation tracker to be updated to reflect the discussion, as noted above.

Resolved:

That the recommendations tracker was noted and the committee agreed to remove pages 23-27 of the tracker as the actions were completed.

Next Steps:

None.