The deadline for questions to be submitted to the Monitoring Officer is 29 April 2022
Minutes:
The following questions were submitted.
Question from Councillor Vikki Slade
Poole Civic Centre is due to be decommissioned later this month for staff and for works to commence on a ‘vertical slice’ around the historic section of the building to create a new coroners court, space for the mayoralty and for the Charter Trustees of Poole. The section was being isolated from the rest of the building so that the rest of the site could be remodelled or redeveloped, with suggestions including housing, hotel or community use.
I recently became aware that the planned works on the Vertical Slice has been shelved as BCP Future Places is concerned that proceeding might compromise plans for the rest of the site and no work will be undertaken over the summer. Can the leader please explain why neither the Mayor of Poole, the Civic Working Party for BCP nor the Charter Trustees of Poole have been consulted about this change of plan, and what the impact will be on the creation of committee rooms and the remodelling of BCP Civic Centre at Bournemouth Town Hall, and on the likelihood of the coroners service remaining in the conurbation if the coroners court will not be vacating this space as planned?
Reply from Councillor Drew Mellor, Leader of the Council
Let me remind the member of an email on this topic that I have sent to members including her, last week. Nothing in this work from Future Places changes the absolute commitment that the charter trustees and mayoralty will ultimately be located as agreed at the Poole Civic (the vertical slice). So to be clear, no plans have been shelved.
This piece of work is to assure us all of who would be the best anchor tenant ie a service like the Coroner or a lease to an anchor tenant like a quality hotelier.
In addition, both the project team and Democratic services have been working with the Poole Charter Trustees to find alternative accommodation and facilities for their use – something that would have had to have happened even were we imminently proceeding with the project to develop and retain the “vertical slice”.
Plans to improve committee meeting space in BCP Civic Centre, including improvements to the Council chamber remain a priority. We are relocating the Cabinet and other Committee meetings to a dedicated space within the BCP Civic Centre Annexe and in addition a dedicated space for the coroner also in the Civic Centre Annexe while ongoing works to the BCP Civic Centre progress.
Councillor Slade clarified that the question was submitted before the email was sent out and after several weeks of toing and froing and it was disappointing that the Leader chose not to engage with anyone until after a question had been submitted to Council.
Question from Councillor Mike Cox
Given the increase in the Transformation budgets for the current year includes over £7 million of staff costs can the Cabinet Member confirm what will happen to these staff members when the Transformation program is completed. Will they
a) Be made redundant
b) Be redeployed
c) A mixture of the 2
If a) have the staff been informed and the redundancy costs factored into the budget and if b) are the redeployment costs factored into the MTFP.
Reply from Councillor Drew Mellor, Leader of the Council
As set out in the 2022/23 Budget Report the council engaged with both CIPFA Consultancy and the External Auditor to provide assurance that the recharge of staff working on the programme who, are therefore not available to support day to day or statutory improvement duties, accorded with the regulations on the Flexible Use of Capital Receipts regulations being used to funding transformation expenditure.
This £6.7m per annum recharge is only part of the time of numerous staff throughout the organisation and will vary as to who it relates to each year as the transformation programme moves through its various phases.
Therefore, the MTFP assumes that the recharge is for the three years to the 31 March 2025 with the costs of these staff in their entirety being again borne from the General Fund from 2025/26 onwards. At which point it is the intention to have delivered the full transformation savings programme, totalling c£50m.
Councillor Cox as a supplementary indicated that must mean b) that they are going to be redeployed. Councillor Mellor in response explained that the staff are not being redeployed they are in their current posts we have no plans to change those, but we do have a plan to make £50m savings to deliver the type of organisation that we created BCP Council for.
Question from Councillor Mike Cox
In the recent settlement by HMG of the Dedicated Schools Grant for the 9 local authorities facing the biggest challenge in respect of deficits these Councils have only received settlements of circa 65% of the deficit. The Councils must cover the remainder from their unallocated reserves.
Can the Cabinet Member confirm that BCP has the adequate budgeted unallocated reserves as at the end of this financial year to accept this offer if it were made?
Reply from Councillor Drew Mellor, Leader of the Council
The 9 local authorities referred to (and the previous 5) are part of what is referred to as the “Safety Valve” mechanism which are the authorities with the highest current levels of absolute deficits on their Dedicated Schools Grants were required to be part off.
BCP Council is not part of the safety valve mechanism as we are not at the threshold of the safety valve authorities but has instead been invited to be part of the “Delivering Better Value” (DBV) in SEND programme. This DBV is a 3-year voluntary transformation programme for authorities with smaller but growing deficits and is linked to Ofsted for those authorities with Written Statements of Action. Councils invited to be part of this programme will get access to resources to support the delivery of the reforms.
The risk associated with this position has been set out clearly as part of the 2022/23 Budget report.
At the end of the meeting the Chairman announced that Karen Tompkins, Deputy Head of Democratic Services would be retiring in June after 36 years service. Councillors gave her a standing ovation.