Directors' Update - July 2019
Policy and Resources Committee
The Policy and Resources Committee met on Thursday 27 June to discuss a number of items including budgets, CCTV, enforcement of cemetery regulations and High Street Action Zones.
Revenue Out-turn 2018/19
Councillors heard that the budget for the cost of providing Council services which was £15.3m was £10,000 underspent. Becuase of additional income we received, we were in total £170,000 underspent .
Budgets totalling £178,000 were carried forward from 2018/19 into 2019/20 to cover expenditure that had been committed but not spent yet as at 31/03/2019.
Due to the uncertainty of the outcome of the Fair Funding Review, which will determine how much income we will receive from 2020/21 onwards, councillors agreed to set up a New Homes Bonus (NHB) Resilience Reserve of £502,000. This will come from the underspend in 2018/19 and also funds transferred from other reserves. We have included NHB in our budget forecasts for the next three years but the grant could be stopped abruptly next year.
Capital Out-turn 2018/19
Councillors also heard that in 2018/19 we had a total Capital Programme Budget of £10.1m. We also received additional external funding of £0.8m for Flood Alleviation Work in Barnoldswick and Earby (£370k) and additional Disabled Facilities Grant (£330k).
This gave us a total budget of £10.9m.
We had spent £2.7m by 31/03/2019 so the remaining budget of £8.2m has been rolled forward in 2019/20.
Our Capital Programme is spent on projects in the following areas:
- Housing
- Disabled Facilities Grants
- Environmental Flood Alleviation Work
- Wheeled Bins
- ICT Strategy Investments
- Area Committee Capital Schemes
- Development and Regeneration projects
- Council Property Improvements and Repairs
- Parks and Recreational Services
CCTV
Meanwhile It was agreed that Barnoldswick, Brierfield, Earby and Nelson town councils, which all fund CCTV locally, will take Pendle Council’s place in the Blackburn CCTV monitoring hub arrangement.
High Street Heritage Action Zone
Councillors agreed that a High Street Heritage Action Zone application be developed and submitted to Historic England for Barnoldswick. They also agreed an application from the Colne BID for Colne. High Street Action Zones are designed to create lasting improvements to historic high streets, restoring and enhancing local character.
Policy themes
An update was given on policy themes, including community safety, prevent, cohesion, children and young people, health and wellbeing and climate change. It was agreed that the option for Pendle Community Safety Partnership to join the Pennine Community Safety Partnership would not be explored further. And a cross-party scrutiny group will be established to consider child poverty in Pendle.