Agenda and minutes

An apology for absence was received from Councillor Cank who was unable to attend as she was Chairing a meeting of the Housing Scrutiny Commission..

Members are asked to declare any interests they may have in the business to be discussed.

No declarations of interest were made.

The City Mayor published the Draft Capital Programme 2018/19 to 2019/20 advising Scrutiny Committees to submit comments on the proposals on or before 28 November 2017.

The Committee is asked to make comments in the proposals in the attached report at Appendix A.  The decision notice to publish the draft Capital Programme, dated 7 November, is also attached at Appendix B.    

The Chair stated that as well as making representations on the draft capital programme at this meeting, Members had up to 28 November 2017 to submit further comments. These would be fed into the Council meeting on 30 November 2017, when the draft programme would be considered.

The City Mayor introduced the report and thanked the Chair for setting up the meeting and inviting members from the executive to attend. Thanks were also given to the Director of Finance and the Head of Finance; the City Mayor emphasised the very considerable amount of work that went into preparing the capital programme.  During his introduction, the City Mayor made a number of points, including the following:

·      The capital programme was not about council running costs; those fell within the revenue budget.  Because of the very significant reductions in government grant, the revenue budget was being reduced substantially within the period 2010 to 2020. Cuts will amount to some £150m per year by 2020.

·      The capital budget is reliant on government grant and proceeds from the sale of council assets (capital receipts). The council needed to exercise caution and could not budget to spend capital receipts until those assets had been sold. 

·      In spite of the budget pressures, the council was investing in the city. It was important that there were high profile capital schemes in the city centre, but even more important that there was money in the capital budget to carry out the necessary schemes in the neighbourhoods to enable people to live, work and shop there.

·      There was a new allocation of £60m in the capital programme towards creating 1000 additional primary school places and 3400 extra secondary school places.

·      Work around the Economic Action Plan was continuing to attract new investment from other sources, and had created 5000 new jobs and 900 apprenticeships. Investment was also continuing on the Connecting Leicester programme. Some investment was attracting funding from other sources such as the European Union.

·      The capital budget included an extra £2m for highways maintenance and repairs. There was also extra money for the Disabled Facilities Grant for adaptations, to enable people to remain in their own homes. 

·      £100k had been provided for city centre play facilities; there were increasing numbers of people with children living in the city centre and it was recognised that there were fewer opportunities in the city, than in the neighbourhoods for children to play outside.   Suggestions for a suitable location for a conventional outdoor play area were welcome and Councillor Dr Moore suggested a good location might be near to the new market square.

·      There were plans for improvements at De Montfort Hall which would increase revenue and enable the venue to be less dependent on the Council’s revenue support in the future.

·      There was funding in the capital budget to enable continuing investment in homes for children in care, to enable those children to feel they were living in a proper home environment.

·      There was £1.4m in the capital budget to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

The meeting closed at 7.30 pm.