Agenda item

Project, Performance and Financial Reporting for 2011/12

Minutes:

Kevin Gordon, Assistant Director (AD), Professional Services, introduced a report setting out the Council’s overall performance covering the period up to and including 31st January, 2012. 

 

Gold Projects

 

The AD highlighted that of the ten active gold projects, eight had been assessed to have an overall ‘Green’ status, and two as ‘Amber’. Five projects had been evaluated at ‘Amber’ status for ‘Issues and Risks’, and two at ‘Amber’ status for ‘Timeline’.  None of the projects had been assessed as having a ‘Red’ status.

In the ensuing debate Members raised a number of concerns regarding the School Places in Slough Gold Project relating to the availability and location of places and the provision of statistics relating to attendance at schools inside and outside of the Borough. Clair Pyper, Strategic Director, Education & Children's Service advised that Slough had the 9th highest growing birthrate in the country and would increase by 28% between 2005 and 2015.  The Director suggested that the subject of school places in Slough could be considered by the Education Panel at a future meeting and the Scrutiny Officer would take this forward.

A Member referred to the key issues of risk/ obstacles to progress within the  Britwell Regeneration Project and asked for further explanation regarding the comments: ‘unable to reach agreement with highest scoring Regeneration Tenderer preferred bidder – risk attenuated by pre-contract and the ‘delay with delivering commercial housing due to economic downturn, / housing market down turn’. The AD advised that this question would be forwarded to the Interim AD, Environment & Regeneration for response.

Further questions were raised regarding future savings under the Transactional Services Project and the number of clients in receipt of personal budget/ direct payments. The Committee was advised that Officers had visited Chesterfield Council to discuss savings achieved by Arvato and for example savings would be achieved in Slough through payroll, printing and post services. 

Performance Scorecard

The AD presented an update on the performance scorecard and responded to a number of questions. 

 

Financial Reporting

 

Emma Foy, Interim Head of Central Finance, outlined the finance report and reminded the Committee that the Council’s net revenue budget for 2011/12 was £105.1m and the Housing Services agreed net operating budget for this period was a surplus of £87k.  The current forecast under spend for the 2011/12 general fund at the end of period 10 was £2.380m following the reallocation of resources. There was currently a forecast under spend of £161k for the Housing Revenue account.  The Committee noted the month on month movement in variances within each directorate, emerging opportunities, staffing budgets and the capital monitoring position.

 

Resolved-  

 

i)  That the current position regarding project management, the  performance  scorecard and financial performance be noted and

 

ii)  That the Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Panel be  recommended to undertake further scrutiny on the issue of school places in Slough.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Supporting documents: