Agenda and 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.

There were no disclosures of personal or prejudicial interest.

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 1^st 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 19^th. 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 17^th 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 3^rd 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.