Issue - meetings

Following scrutiny, members noted the report and the suggestions and views put forward by the committee.

3(a) Budget Report

David Griffiths Head of Engineering and Transport gave a brief overview of the ENV-A proposal which is Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) Approval Body (SAB) and Highway development control. Members were advised that it relates to some small fees that will be added to SAB assessments undertaken by officers including responding to solicitors’ letters. Officers would introduce a small fee for responding to those letters and a small increase in fees and charges to deal with the Section 278 and 38 agreements. These have been benchmarked against other local authorities and are nominal increases.

Members asked why the calculations haven’t been included in the report as it would be helpful to have when members of the public ask them about increases.

Officers advised that they didn’t have the breakdown of the £11,000 savings listed but explained that they are small fees because there are multiple applications across the portfolio. Officers advised that they tried to focus on areas which will have the least impact in terms of the budget savings. The director of Environment Nicola Pearce advised that they are finding it very difficult to achieve the target set for all directors of 5% savings.

The Director reminded members that over the last few years, officers have made cuts to all low hanging fruit and now they must make some difficult decisions in terms of proposals as those easier cuts have all been made. Officers have benchmarked all fees and charges against neighbouring authorities to try and ensure when increasing charges and fees so that the authority is not an outlier.

Officers advised that they could provide a list of the fees and charges to scrutiny members after the meeting if they want that level of detail.

The Cabinet member for Climate Change and Economic Growth Commented that the value for money that the authority gives and the expertise it has got, not just in the SAB department but in many of the other departments is great and if you had to go privately for the services then it would cost probably two or three times as much.

David Griffiths gave members an overview of ENVB budget line on the transport support, which is a reduction in council revenue spent on local bus support and utilising Welsh Government grants only to support the bus network. He explained that in terms of local bus support, it's currently made-up of three funding mechanisms.

The first is Welsh Government supplied Bus Services Support Grant, which is £25 million across the whole of Wales, of which NPT gets £5.1 million.

There was also the bus emergency scheme during COVID which has now ended and there is a new bus network grant of £2.77 million and the council puts its own revenue in of £791K.

Members were also advised that the Authority also gets concessionary fares allocations of circa £1.6 million, and a further £113,000 for administration.

The total for concessionary fares received by the authority is approximately £2.3 million of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3