Issue - meetings

To consider a report of the Strategic Director of Children, Families and Adults.

Janine Evans, Capital and Land Development Manager attended to provide a summary report on the current position of the Children and Families Capital Programme.

Janine drew attention to the overall Children and Families Capital Programme which, at the current time, equated to £109.5m. For 2012/13 the In Year Budget was £29.8m and this was being funded by a variety of sources including:

·         Devolved Formula Capital (£4.9m)

·         Other Government Grant (£16.9m)

·         External Contributions (£0.1m)

·         Supported Borrowing (£2.4m)

·         Unsupported Borrowing (£5.2m)

·         Capital Reserve (£0.4m)

Janine continued to outline the 2012/13 New Starts which equated to £9.682m out of the total budget of £29.8m. Janine noted that Appendix 1 of the report provided the detail to the Children and Families Capital programme and that it included both open and closed schemes.

It was queried how much of the 2012/13 In Year Budget (£29.8m) was slippage from previous years. Janine confirmed that she would distribute this information to the Committee via email.

Referring to Appendix 1, it was questioned how the Committee could be made aware of whether a given scheme was on or off budget or whether it would be completed on time. Fintan Bradley acknowledged that some thought would be required to determine the best way to report such information but that it could be possible to include a capital projects status in a regular performance report.

Similarly, it was queried whether a mechanism could be put in place to inform Committee Members of when major (over £500k) capital projects were in development. It was suggested that a list be forwarded to the Chairman and Scrutiny Officer on a regular basis and from this relevant projects could be drawn to the attention of the Committee.

RESOLVED –

a)    That the report be noted.

b)    That the Capital and Land Development Manager circulate information on the amount of slippage in the 2012/13 In Year Budget to the Committee via email.

c)    That the Head of Service: Strategy, Planning & Performance explore the most effective mechanism to report capital project over/under spends and missed deadlines to the Committee.

d)    That the Capital and Land Development Manager provide a list of upcoming capital projects with a budget of over £500k to the Chairman and Scrutiny Officer so that they may be passed to the Committee for further exploration.