Agenda item

To consider a report by the Director for Digital, Sustainability and Resources, copy attached as item 11

Before the committee was a report by the Director for Digital, Sustainability and Resources, a copy of which had been circulated to all members, a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of these minutes as item 11

The report before members outlined a proposed budget strategy for the development of the 2022/23 budgets against the background of the pandemic.

The Head of Financial Services was present to introduce the report to the committee and take questions from members.

A Member asked the following: Page 106 - How does Ikea’s absence impact the Councils expected income from business rates? Members were told that there would be no immediate impact from the loss of Ikea. Any additional income from business rates was not built into the forecasts until there was certainty about when the building was likely to be completed and occupied. In any event the Council would have only benefited from around 20% of any net gain in rates under the retention system.

A Member asked the following question: Re Para 4.4.6  point 2. Apologies if I couldn’t see it from the figures but how do we perform at exceeding the government target on business rate collection?  The committee was told that in relation to the amount of income the Council raised in relation to the target rather than our collection rate itself.  This was shown on the tables below paragraph 4.4.6 and was titled ‘Retained Surplus’. This represented the 20% share that the Council could retain so the overall performance was much higher.

A Member asked the following question: Re Para 4.5.8 - Given the current Council tax arrears, and the importance of council tax as a source of income, is it possible to model the expected fluctuation in council tax arrears in the coming year? Members were told that the impact of both arrears and the provision for bad debts was allowed for in the calculation of the income from Council Tax. In effect it was assumed that there would be a loss on average of 1% - the Authorities tended to collect over 98% each year with a proportion collected the following years, although in 2020/21 the collection rate was lower (96.3%) in part due to a suspension of debt recovery action through the courts.

A Member asked the following question: Re Platform 2 page 119 - Is there a prediction of the amount of council tax and government reward grant that will be collected on new homes being developed in Worthing over the next 12 months? Members were told that with respect to Council Tax the Councils were modelling for the purposes of the MTFS for Worthing annual growth of 0.4% per year. This would be refined later in the year when actual new units expected for the forthcoming year would be substituted for this estimate based on intelligence from Council Tax and Building Control. The New Homes Bonus system was being reviewed by MHCLG and there is no certainty about the shape of the new system (known unknown). However in the past two years the reward grant has only been for 1 year rather than the previous system of awarding the grant for four years. Consequently, we have adopted an approach of setting aside this grant to fund new projects rather than using it to fund the base budget.