Agenda and minutes

To receive apologies for absence from the meeting.

Mrs Norma Redfearn, Elected Mayor, welcomed everyone to this virtual meeting of North Tyneside Council’s Cabinet.

You are invited to verbally declare any registerable and/or non-registerable interests in matters appearing on the agenda, and the nature of that interest.

You are also invited to disclose any dispensation in relation to any registerable and/or non-registerable interests that have been granted to you in respect of any matters appearing on the agenda.

No declarations of interest or dispensations were reported.

To consider a report on the 2021-2025 Financial Planning and Budget Process: to seek approval for Cabinet’s Draft Proposals for 2021/22 for the General Fund Revenue budget, Dedicated Schools Grant, Investment Plan and Housing Revenue Account (HRA)  

The Cabinet considered a report on the 2021-2025 draft Budget and Council Tax proposals and final budget proposals for the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Business Plan and Budget. The report presented proposals to cover a four-year planning period from 2021-2025 for the revenue Budget and a five-year planning horizon for the Investment Plan.

The Authority’s 2020/21 Budget and accompanying Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) had been agreed by full Council in February 2020, prior to the significant escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Inevitably, the MTFP agreed in February 2020 could not foresee the adjustments which had been necessary to respond to COVID-19 during the current financial year.

The 2021/22 Budget was being prepared in exceptional circumstances and there was a significant level of risk and uncertainty in relation to the level of funding that would be available to local government in 2021/22 and beyond.  Key reforms to local government funding, including the Fair Funding Review, Business Rates Retention and reform of adult social care funding had all been repeatedly delayed.  Nationally, the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), which would have set out the Government’s spending plans over the next three years, had been delayed.  In November 2020, the Government had announced a one-year spending round for 2021/22 and on 17 December 2020 published the Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2021/22.  Full details of the Provisional Settlement were included in Annex A, section 3 to the report.

The Provisional Settlement confirmed that Core Spending Power (CSP) for local authorities would increase by 4.5% in cash terms in 2021/22.  The Government’s assumption was that to achieve this increase all authorities would implement the maximum allowed Council Tax increase of 5%: a 2% increase for general Council Tax and a 3% increase for the Adult Social Care Precept.  In calculating CSP, the Government had assumed that each authority’s Council Tax Base, used to calculate the total level of Council Tax resources, had increased in line with their average Council Tax Base growth since 2016/17.

The Government had estimated that local authorities would have access to an additional £1.0bn of social care resources in 2021/22.  However, of this, £0.700bn was assumed to be raised from the Adult Social Care Precept and £0.300bn had been identified as additional grant funding.  Unlike in previous years there would be no New Homes Bonus returned surplus in 2021/22.  The Government had used the surplus to partially fund the social care grant, the increase in revenue support grant and the new lower-tier services grant.

As in previous years, the key feature of the Provisional Settlement was the increased reliance on increasing Council Tax: 87% of the increase in CSP for 2021/22 was from assumed Council Tax increases (52% in 2020/21) and was accompanied by relatively low increases in grant funding.  In recent Settlements, raising local taxation had, in the main, been the Government’s short-term solution to the fact that there was still no sustainable Settlement for local government or a route to pay for rising demand and costs in  ...  view the full minutes text for item CAB200/21

Monday 8 February 2021 at 6.00pm.

Monday 8 February 2020 at 6.00pm (Extraordinary meeting).