Agenda item

(a)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Lane “With the Council’s budget deficit increasing....what action does the Leader intend to take to ensure a balanced budget out-turn can be achieved?”  Councillor Worden’s response “The new funding announcements made a couple of weeks ago are currently being modelled to update the Council’s latest financial position.  We have also last week had confirmation of North Devon’s share of the £500million, which is a further £171,055; taking our overall additional funding up to £1,189,063. The Government also announced a reimbursement of losses on sales, fees and charges; the technical guidance around this has only just been provided last Friday and the team are building this into our financial modelling; together with the further announcement the Chancellor made of allowing Councils to spread deficits on their taxation income (council tax and business rates) over the next three years; rather than it being a financial burden in this year.  The impact of all these recent announcements will be included in our updated July financial return submitted to Government next week and will form the basis for a refreshed Medium Term Financial Plan which we will be looking to bring to members in September.  We are in addition lobbying Government for an early indication of future year funding 2021-22 for local authorities so that we can plan for 2021-22 and beyond as some of the measures announced push the cost to the following financial years.  We will still be faced with a forecast budget gap, just over a much longer period and not just this year, but the recent funding announcements do provide some breathing space for 2020-21 and time to receive a refreshed Medium Term Financial Plan from our Chief Financial Officer in September for members to approve.”

(b)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Lane “What strategy has the Council adopted going forward to make waste and recycling more financially efficient?”   Councillor Worden’s response “We have recently just started to evaluate how we procure our vehicle fleet and have started a project to look at this together with associated changes within the process hall.  Both these infrastructure projects are intended to put us in a stronger position to be able to deal with future roll out improvements to the Waste and Recycling service if members are wishing to make such changes.   If members support a decision to make further service improvements then there are anticipated financial benefits to be received from such changes.  A full business case and report will of course be presented to members to analyse the detail of any such proposals.”

(c)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Yabsley “What planning is in place....given the known position and the latest information from Government....in terms of future budget setting for next year and indeed for the next 3 years?”  Councillor Worden’s response “Annual budgets for the following financial year are always brought to Council in February preceding the new financial year.  As I have mentioned in my answer to Councillor Lane’s question we are lobbying Government for an early indication of future year funding 2021-22 for local authorities so that we can plan for 2021-22 and beyond as some of the measures announced push the cost to the following financial years.  Normally we receive our financial settlement from Government in December for the next financial year; we are pushing for an earlier announcement on this funding stream so that we can plan for 2021-22 and beyond much earlier as Members will no doubt have some big decisions to make about our future financial spend priorities.  We do know that we will still be faced with a forecast budget gap, just over a much longer period and not just this year 2020-21, the recent funding announcements are being modelled and we are looking to bring a refreshed Medium Term Financial Plan from our Chief Financial Officer in September that looks ahead for the next four financial years.”

(d)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Bushell “When the Council started charging again for car parks there were some problems as we weren’t taking cash.  Has this situation now been resolved? Would the Leader also kindly inform us how the current car parking income compares to what we were receiving before the coronavirus pandemic!”  Councillor Worden’s response “We switched the pay and display machines back on in June, having been off for almost three months, we did experience some teething issues with a couple of the card enabled machines.  The rationale behind not accepting cash initially was to protect both our customers and our staff from the need to handle cash in light of Covid-19 and we offered cashless payments on our car parks in the form of either card enabled machines or via the RingGo payment solution.  We have re-introduced cash as a payment method in our car parks from the beginning of July however we are still promoting the cashless method as our preferred payment option.  Not charging in our car parks for the months of April and May has seen a reduction of around £275,000 per month in loss of income to the Council.  We re-introduced charging from mid-June and for the last month 15^th June to 15^th July, we have received around £120,000 which is a -55% drop in revenue;  (Note: for the June ‘half-month’ period it was a -72% drop on previous year whereas this has improved in the July period to a -35% drop) thus we are starting to see a higher level of car park activity following the 4 July lockdown measures being relaxed, but nowhere near still the pre-Covid 19 levels.”

(e)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Luggar “How do Council Officers assess NDCs Homelessness Strategy?”  Councillor Worden’s response “NDC’s latest Homelessness Strategy was adopted in Nov 2019.  The statutory base is section 1 of the Homelessness Act 2002. The council is also required to follow the Homelessness Code of guidance for local authorities in preparing this document.  Key components of the strategy include an assessment of current and future needs. We look at demand for Temporary Accommodation and also support needs.  Our latest strategy was informed by the input of some key local stakeholders (NDH, Police, Freedom, Encompass, Adult Social Care and Mental Health) and a survey of users.”

(f)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Luggar “Does the Council have enough suitably trained and skilled Officers to deal with the increased volume of people presenting as homeless and needing to access our services and if not what is being done to address this?”  Councillor Worden’s response “A revised structure was put in place to deliver the Homelessness Reduction Act in April 2017. More officers were assigned to directly helping our community. Capacity has also been increased as a result of the council drawing down Rough Sleeper Initiative Funding since 2018/19. Our outreach team includes officers from Mental Health and Adult Social Services. Four housing officers have been given the chance to undertake formal qualifications to further enhance their skills in the last few years.  The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on demand notwithstanding the control on evictions put in place by Government. At the start cases came in at a rate of around 25 cases per week. This peaked when 99 new cases were received over a period of 2 weeks. Current demand has stabilised at around 35-40 cases per week. The presenting issues are predominately around relationship/ family breakdowns. The statutory code has also been revised to reflect an individual’s potential vulnerability to COVID-19. More people will now have a statutory entitlement to support. In the short term more Temporary Accommodation is being procured and some temporary staff contracts will be extended. A more detailed paper will be presented to Senior Management Team in the Autumn.”

(g)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Luggar “What does the Council do to assist people to whom it owes prevention and relief duties? And how does the Council monitor how effective these actions are?”  Councillor Worden’s response “The council is highly effective in preventing homelessness. A wide variety of interventions are used including mediation and the provision of rent in advance/ deposit payments linked to an affordable repayment plan.  Absolute and rates of successful prevention activity are tracked overtime and reported to Government quarterly via H-CLIC, the information is publically available.”

(h)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Luggar “Does the Council learn lessons from complaints received identifying any systemic issues that may effect others?”  Councillor Worden’s response “Complaints and requests for formal reviews of the council’s decisions are very low. No systemic failings have been identified following investigation of these issues.”

(i)

Question to Councillor Worden from Councillor Luggar “How has the Council improved its homelessness services as a result of complaints?”  Councillor Worden’s response “The Council’s officers drive service improvement because of their professionalism and care for our community. The success of the service is directly attributable to the efforts of officers across the council, particularly IT and Estates of late, and our collaboration with statutory and voluntary sector partners.”