Venue: held remotely via video-conference
No. | Item |
---|---|
Apologies Minutes: Councillor Wyn
Thomas apologised for his inability to attend the meeting due to storm Eunice
impact resulting in power failure. Councillor Lyndon Lloyd MBE apologised for
his inability to attend the meeting. Eifion Evans, Chief Executive, apologised
for his inability to attend the meeting. |
|
Disclosures of personal interest (including whipping declarations) Members are reminded of their personal responsibility to declare any personal and prejudicial interest in respect of matters contained in this agenda in accordance with the provisions of the Local Government Act 2000, the Council's Constitution and the Members Code of Conduct. In addition, Members must declare any prohibited party whip which the Member has been given in relation to the meeting as per the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2011. Minutes: There were no disclosures of
personal or prejudicial interest. |
|
Report on the Draft Budget 2022/2023 PDF 3 MB Minutes: Councillor Ivor Williams, Committee Chair, outlined
the meeting procedure and welcomed the Leader of the Council, Councillor Ellen
ap Gwynn, Cabinet Members and Officers to the meeting. The Leader of the Council, Councillor
Ellen ap Gwynn, presented the report on the draft budget for 2022/2023
including the three year capital programme, explaining that this is a
provisional settlement, and that the final settlement is due on the 1st
March, 2022. The
total revenue settlement, known as the Aggregate External Finance (AEF)
allocated to Ceredigion for 2022/23 is £119.419m. This compares with 2021/22 allocation of
£110.006m (adjusted for transfers) and is an increase of 8.6%. Wales as a whole
has seen an average increase of 9.4% with Ceredigion ranked at 19th.
The Leader advised Committee Members that since her
appointment in 2012, £50 million savings had been made. The Leader also stated that a letter had been
received on 17th February 2022 from Rebecca Evans MS, Minister for
Finance and Local Government announcing
an increase of £50m for the local government settlement for 2021-2022. The
amount to be allocated to Ceredigion County Council is unknown to date but is
likely to be circa £1m. The funding is un-hypothecated (i.e. not allocated to
specific services) and can be carried forward in reserves to the 2022-2023
financial year. It was explained that the implications of this additional
funding would need to be considered and how that would be allocated for the
2022-2023 budget. Members welcomed
the additional funding but expressed their disappointment that the announcement
was late and that it didn’t allow for scrutiny to take place based on the new
information. The Chief Executive confirmed that information would be presented
for Council on 3rd March 2022 and that there would be an opportunity
to discuss the options for the additional funding. Ceredigion’s Settlement reflects a range of
less financially favourable re-distributional movements seen in population and
Secondary School pupil number indicators. Standard Spending Assessments (SSA)
are notional calculations of what each Council needs to spend to provide a
standard level of service. The SSA for 2022/23 is £166.372m which is a 7.2%
increase from the previous year (2021/22 £155.153m). The most significant
service increase being personal social services at 12.2%. The budget model has been drafted to include
the adjustments with regard to the provisional settlement. Any adjustments
required that arise in the final settlement will require consideration and
appropriate incorporation into the budget. The detailed assessment work
carried out to identify the unavoidable cost pressures faced by Services has
been finalised and identified a net total amount of £13.1m, which is summarised
in Appendix 1 of the agenda papers. This amount is almost double the previous
years and is £3.8m more than the increased sum available in the settlement and
this would equate to the need to increase Council Tax by close to 8%, however some
savings are available to the budget setting process. The Rising costs of Care alone
totals £7m, including: - UK £9.90 ... view the full minutes text for item 3. |