Issue - meetings

Members will consider the Executive Decision relating to the Corporate Resources and Spending Review Programme.

The Committee received details of the decision of the City Mayor to approve proposals to achieve savings from the corporate resources division as part of the Council’s spending programme.

An assurance was requested that there would be continued support for Community Meetings and that an allocation would continue to be made for Ward Grants, as there had been some concern that both of these things would be removed under the proposed review.

The Deputy City Mayor confirmed that Ward Meetings would continue to have an important role in communications, but it was recognised that they were more successful at this in some parts of the city than others.  Support therefore would continue to be generally given to community meetings.

With regard to Ward Budgets, it was noted that there was a view that other budgets could be used to enhance these. For example, health funding recently had been approved to wards to be used to encourage people to grow their own food.  This highlighted the need to bring coherence to how budgets were used in the future.

It also was asked whether the posts in the Press Team that currently were vacant would be deleted under this review.  In reply, the City Mayor confirmed that the Press Team was excluded from this review.

The Committee noted that details of anticipated savings for Delivery, Communications and Political Governance were not given in the report, as they were for other service areas.  The Director of Finance explained that this figure was profiled in the report, but each division was structured differently.  Delivery, Communications and Political Governance Services consisted of a number of small teams; however, in Financial Services for example, teams were large and therefore it was impossible to allocate targets to teams within the division. More detailed information could be provided to Members as it became available, along with details of current and proposed staffing structures.

In reply to a query about the future structure of Democratic Services, it was noted that every area of those services would be reviewed.  This would include consideration of how meetings would be supported in the future.  However, the review would not just focus on staff, but would include things such as increasing use of paperless technology and how the public could be engaged in scrutiny meetings.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the relevant Directors be asked to provide more detailed information on where savings will be made under the spending review of Corporate Resources and Support services as they become available, this information to include current and proposed staffing structures; and

2)    That the Chief Operating Officer be asked to consider the comments recorded above during the forthcoming spending review programme review of Corporate Resources and Support.