The Deputy Mayor invited the Leader of the Council to introduce the budget and advised that he had 20 minutes to do so.

 

Councillor J. Kent

 

I have to say Madam Deputy Mayor, that setting the Council’s budget becomes increasingly difficult year on year, and I want to start by thanking Sean Clark and his officers, in fact all Senior Offices and Senior Members for their work over many many months that they have put in to getting the proposals and recommendations that we have before us this evening.

 

This year has been different in many ways. For a start we have a three way political split in the council, and yet despite that we have seen unprecedented co-operation from both the opposition groups in overseeing the necessary and difficult decisions the council has had to take.

 

The Leaders and Deputy Leaders of the Conservative and UKIP parties have joined with me and Councillor Barbara Rice, and the individual portfolio holders, in examining pretty much every line of each directorate's budget.

 

Between us we sought out ways of reducing spending while protecting the front line as far as possible. And then there was the overview and scrutiny process. These cross-party committees have looked over these proposals, suggesting changes and tweaks, but in the main have backed our suggestions and proposals.

 

We also have to look at how the rules have changed. From 2010 onwards the national government was putting pressure on councils to maintain council tax levels whilst at the same time cutting grants and offering what they call a council tax freeze grant, usually the equivalent to around one per cent on council tax. We took this bribe each year – bar one.

 

But now the government has changed so have the rules. The new, Conservative Government has ushered in the era of – what it calls – “Financial Self Sustainability”. They say that ever council in the country is being expected to raise council tax by very nearly two per cent and those with social care responsibilities such as us here in Thurrock, should add a further two per cent – the Social Care precept.

 

Madam Deputy Mayor, in helping decide on the level of Council Tax increase we asked the cross party Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee to look at all the issues and come up with a recommendation on the way forward.

 

I am really grateful to Councillors Hebb and Snell – as the Chair and Vice Chair of that committee – for undertaking that task, for taking it seriously and for their committee unanimously agreeing the recommended increase that we have before us this evening.

 

So led by Cabinet and endorsed by Councillors from all three of the major parties here in Thurrock – Labour, Conservative, UKIP – we have jointly come to the conclusion that if Thurrock Council is to be able to continue providing the services that people rely on – supporting the vulnerable, supporting families, supporting the young and the old – then we must support in turn tonight's recommendation to increase council tax by 3.99 per cent.

 

To put that into some context, unlike most of the rest of the country where Band D homes were the average, Band D homes account for less than a fifth of Thurrock homes, the vast majority – over two-thirds – were Band A, B and C. So if we look at the weekly cost of Thurrock’s 3.99 per cent increase, a Band A home is 57p a week, for a Band B it’s 67p a week, and for a Band C – which is the band most Thurrock homes fall into – it is 77p a week.

 

Madam Deputy Mayor, it is important to realise that moan as we might – and we all moan about our bills, I’m no different to anybody else in that – out of the 55 unitary councils in this country, Thurrock has the third lowest council tax. This means that we were only able to raise the third lowest amount of council tax income – it’s around £550,000 per one per cent increase; we receive the third lowest level of Revenue Support Grant from the government; we have the third lowest net budget; and we have the fifth lowest net budget per head of population.

 

This leads to two things; the first is that implementing the government’s Social Care precept – the care tax – will bring in £1.1 million. The cost of our contractors implementing the Living Wage, I have to say that the living wage is a good thing and something we all support, but the cost to this council will be at £1½ million, a shortfall of £400,000 before any of the other demographic challenges we face in this area were considered.

 

The 1.99 per cent Council Tax increase will also bring in around £1.1 million, but we face new costs such as the Apprentice Levy – again a good initiative but one that will cost us half a million pounds – and the scrapping of the Council Tax Freeze grant that removes another £600,000 takes care of that entire increase. All of this at the same time as our government grant is being cut by a quarter in April – where we lose another £8 million.

 

The second is that since 2010, in real terms and taking inflation into account, our Council Tax bills here in Thurrock have effectively fallen in real terms by £100 pounds a year. This proposed rise recoups roughly half of that. So, hopefully with the support of our colleagues around this chamber, I am proposing that Council Tax should rise by 3.99 per cent this April.

 

The budget that we were proposing this evening is for a total of £110 million pounds.

 

It includes no new cuts to front line services and I point out that unlike many other councils we still have a weekly bin collection collecting three streams, we have no library closures and we have kept the street lights on. In fact this budget provides a little extra cash to maintain some subsidised buses, providing a new library facility for Purfleet and for additional street cleaning. How have we managed to do this?

 

From what I hear, there were those amongst our colleagues opposite who claim we were a left wing group unable to provide leadership at all. Madam Deputy Mayor I just do not accept that. We were sensible people; people who care about other people; people who care about Thurrock now and Thurrock in the future. We were sensible people who work hard for Thurrock now for the future of Thurrock; people who want local business to grow and prosper today, tomorrow and beyond; we were sensible people who have helped attract hundreds of new jobs and sensible people who were still working hard to ensure that even more new jobs come Thurrock's way; we were sensible people who work hard to help those who work hard and we work hard to protect those who cannot help themselves; in short, we were sensible people who have sensible ideas which were beginning to bear fruit – and I just want to look at some of those sensible ideas that we have led on these past few years.

 

We’ve led on creating a new-look Purfleet; a new town centre, new shops, new homes and new offices, with a new railway station and a huge television and film studio complex.

 

Over the past few years we have seen our schools improve well beyond expectations. If we got back to 2010 and 2011 our colleagues opposite seemed to at times take great pleasure at lambasting school performance; talking down Thurrock’s young people; and damning their efforts. But not any longer. Madam Deputy Mayor in 2010 the vast majority of our schools needed improvement, today the vast majority were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. That doesn’t mean that there’s not more work to do, of course there is, and we won’t rest until every place of learning is rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. If we go back to Purfleet and the High House Production Park,  we have led the way, with two Royal Opera House centres, a national centre for learning and skills, dozens of artist studios and this week we hear the Royal Academy of Arts – yes THE Royal Academy of Arts – also want to come to Purfleet too.

 

On a more bureaucratic note, let’s look at the Local Enterprise Partnership. It covers the whole of Kent, Essex and East Sussex and yet where do the millions of pounds come? They come to Thurrock, or through Thurrock to Thames Gateway South Essex – schemes like the £5 million for developing the A13 widening to ensure that we get the tens of millions pounds needed to complete the project, £5 million towards the Purfleet town centre proposal, £7½ million towards improving access to London Gateway and its jobs, £5 million for improving the borough’s cycle network, thirty-five-and-a-half million pounds for improving pinch-point projects across South Essex and £14 million for sustainable transport plans across South Essex.

 

And what about jobs and business? I think we’ve led on jobs and business time and time again, from London Gateway, in the thousands, to the Old Courthouse in Grays – in the hundreds. Where-ever you look jobs were being created here in Thurrock and that’s because we have worked alongside our business partners, large and small, showing a can-do and will-do attitude; we have led on and created an atmosphere here in Thurrock that acts like a magnet attracting billions, yes billions of pounds of private investment.

 

Despite the global recession Thurrock’s employment rate is now above the national average, one of the more impressive changes is employment generation, where our leadership has encouraged private sector investment, is the creation of 5,000 jobs between 2007 and 2014, a growth of very nearly eight per cent which is more than double the national and regional averages.

 

Then we have the Business Board. We created a business led forum for local businesses large, small and intermediate to get together, to talk and discuss the future.

 

If we look here in Grays, just across the road we have the new South Essex College campus, a project made possible because this council took the right decision to put its land into the project. Now the whole of the town is benefitting as hundreds and hundreds of students and associated workers come here every day.

 

What else have we led on in Grays? Saving the theatre and keeping the Thameside running, not selling it off as some had suggested the way forward to be. Instead we want to maintain our town’s arts heritage until we can create a brand new 21st century complex on the riverside to become the flagship of a revitalised town literally making the best of our Thames-side location.

 

Thurrock Council has developed the best counter-fraud team in the Country, a team that works with police forces nationwide as well as supporting other councils, housing associations and even a government department.

 

We have led on creating our own wholly owned company to kick-start housing developments and create low-cost homes for local people; we’ve led on attracting new devolved powers from government – battling with Essex to ensure we don’t lose out and working with Southend for the benefit of both boroughs; we have taken on industry giants like Serco, bringing back 400 staff members – as well as saving at least £300,000 each and every month, money which went straight to the company’s profit margin and not to local services; and, of course, for the past four years and more we have led on fighting plans to tarmac our borough with a massive new motorway and Thames crossing.

 

Madam Deputy Mayor we have taken on and welcomed new Public Health responsibilities – despite our initial problems of over a million pounds of our money being given to Essex County Council. We still welcome those responsibilities although things were made more difficult when the government announced a £655,000 cut in the middle of this working year and after all our contracts had been let; and we still welcome Public Health responsibilities even though that cut has now been increased to £924,000 – nearly £1 million less to spend on local people’s health – in the coming year.

 

On top of all of these successes, and on top of the continual cut-cut-cut in our finances, we have still managed business pretty much as usual. Yes there have been some cuts, but the vast majority of our services have continued with minimal impact – not only is this because we have managed the problem well, but it is also down to our hard-working and dedicated staff – from top to bottom. Madam Deputy Mayor we should here tonight say thank you to each one of our 2,000 workers. So I move the recommendations before us this evening – recommendations that protect the front line, invest in our priorities, protect our replenished reserves and – once again – will levy the lowest Council Tax in Essex.

 

The Deputy Mayor then invited the Leader of the Opposition to respond and advised that he had 15 minutes to do so.

 

Councillor Gledhill

 

Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor, and thank you Councillor Kent for your very informative budget speech as they tend to be every year.  There were some aspects of this report I will be supporting, for example, the Adult Social Care increase. For at least a decade, if not longer, irrespective of political leadership every Council has been raising this as an issue. But for five years of a Labour Government and at least five years of the Coalition Government, these issues were not really addressed. However, first year of Conservative Government we have the opportunity to start to fix this Adult Social Care time bomb that has been ticking, for as I say, more than a decade.

 

Will the Adult Social Care premium – I don’t like calling it a care tax – solve the problem? No, no it won’t. Will it make a dent in how much money we will need to spend on that this year? No, no it won’t. Will it be the start of some serious conversations about funding for our older residents who were vulnerable and in need? Yes, I really hope it does, but what we have got to remember is that this care needs to be paid for. It will be paid for either directly through the council tax payments from taxpayers or what we pay through directly for income tax payers – from tax payers – but whatever way you look at it, it will come from the tax payer.

 

I must echo Councillor Kent’s comments about the way this budget has been put together, what the Section 151 officer has done this year can only be described as some form of accountancy magic, and it really must be applauded. No extra cuts to front line services, except for those that already have been proposed and agreed last year by certain Members of this Chamber. But it just goes to show another example of what happens when government turns off the tax payer taps – innovation starts to become the norm and we don’t end up with the same old, same old; and this is why it makes it very difficult, very, very difficult to oppose this budget – I say very difficult, but not impossible.

 

Now, as Councillor Kent has said, we had cross-party meetings with the Leaders and Deputy Leaders – and I know I missed one of them – but I can’t remember a line by line breakdown of what was going on, on what is being spent, my apologies.

 

If we did have that then of course we would still be remembering roughly £13 million pounds on temporary staff and consultancy fees, will be the cost by the end of the year; roughly £10 million of that alone on temporary staff. £2 million spend on suppliers of taxis and other contract hire vehicles – which don’t appear to be checked for financial viability or correct expenditure. £88,000 on professional subscriptions going to the Council, to obviously make sure that officers subscribe to certain national bodies to do their job properly. I can’t quite work out why we were paying them for officers to ensure that they were keeping their qualifications up-to-date. My favourite of course, £45,000 on a paid union rep, something we were promised a long discussion on. I can’t remember that at all, and if we had gone line by line, as has been suggested, we would notice that we spent £3000 on a male entertainment troupe, and I use that term quite politely. Now, this was a group that went to perform at Thameside; now fortunately this £3000 was one of the ones that was well spent, it made a very small profit – probably the first time the Council didn’t lose its shirt when everyone else was.

Now at the moment we were also supporting what should only be described as commercial operations, now these commercial operations were being subsidised by the tax payer directly to the tune of £1.5 million pounds a year. Now, we were always told that there were reasons for this and we haven’t got provision very well in this area and we need outside help for doing that – now if we weren’t supplying a taxi service as a subsidised service we would end up with businesses taking up opportunities there; and when the businesses take up the opportunities there, the tax payer is not seeing their money wasted to support things that should at least break even.

 

Now I’m not saying that these services should be scrapped, far from it, that would be the wrong thing, and as Councillor Kent has pointed out, not shutting the Thameside instantly and putting the plans forward for a brand new Thameside Theatre that’s on the side of the Thames is the right thing to do; but of course between now and then every council tax payer will be paying for this.

 

I’m also a bit concerned about the scaremongering that’s in the report that’s saying that if we don’t agree the budget tonight the first thing that’s going to go is subsidised bus services, street cleaning and libraries; now what were they being picked out when we have got, as I say, things that should be commercially viable being subsidised by the tax payer – they could easily choose those before hitting residents directly.

 

Now, one thing we haven’t seen tonight is obviously the fabled graph of doom, a graph that only shows a portion of the money that this Council gets. And to put this into perspective – in 2010 we had £127 million pounds, sorry I’ve got that wrong my apologies, its one-two-six million pounds and then in 2015 we have got £122 million, a drop of just £5 million – a 4 per cent reduction – not this graph of doom that basically needs to be put on the first floor to show that its crashed so far it’s in the basement, it’s ridiculous.

 

Now we also see from last year that agenda item 1.8 to 1.8.3, to delegate powers back to Cabinet to agree certain borrowing and expenditure, last year we agreed as a Council not to support that so whenever we get grants in from outside, whenever we decide to spend huge, vast amounts of money on Gloriana, it should be decisions made in this full Council so all of our residents know that we have had a say and either we have all agreed or we didn’t agree. We were not flooded with these enquiries last year, in fact I can only think of one, so I cannot see why we would want to delegate to Cabinet those powers again and I shall be rejecting those proposals and ask that they were not delegated and remain with Council.

 

Other than that Madam Deputy Mayor, as I say, I’m finding it very, very difficult to oppose the proposals – there were not massive cuts that were being done – this is not down to this administrations good management, this is down to Mr Clark and his team who as I say, pulled the rabbit out of the hat – the financial rabbit out of the hat – this year, and time and again, and they must be applauded. Thank you.

 

The Deputy Mayor invited Councillor J. Kent to respond and advised that he had 10 minutes to do so.

 

Councillor J. Kent

 

I shall take ten minutes as a ceiling not a floor, Madam Deputy Mayor. First of all I will thank Councillor Gledhill for his broad support, I tend to agree with him when it comes to support for Adult Social Care. All we have seen is the government moving the burden of taxation away from Central Government and putting it into Local Government; I think that this is a theme that we will see more and more over the next four and five years. As Councillor Gledhill quite rightly said, if we want good quality Social Care it has to be paid for, whether that’s paid for by income tax, or paid for through Council Tax, this government – as it moves to financial self-sustainability for local authorities – it is quite clear, it will be down to local authorities to get the blame for raising these bills.

 

Councillor Gledhill came out with a series of examples of spending that he may not agree with, including the way that we hire acts at the Thameside Theatre; I have to say I don’t think it’s for Members of this Council to get involved in the operational detail of which acts were hired to go on stage at the Thameside Theatre.

 

I also wonder if Councillor Gledhill thinks that he hasn’t seen each of the directorate line by line, how he comes up with those lines, but there we go. And finally, I’m glad that Councillor Gledhill appreciates the graph of doom, we will have to bring it back out. The graph of doom of course charts the fall in our Revenue Support Grant, a Revenue Support Grant that in three years’ time will disappear altogether.

 

Councillor Gledhill rather disingenuously, I think, goes back to the £126 million budget that we set in 2010 and compares it, I’m sorry I didn’t catch the year, to a budget of £122 million – the budget we set tonight is for £110 million; of course much of that difference is the new responsibilities that we have been given, back in 2010 we had a development corporation that provided all of our strategic planning, for example, that has now returned to the Council with the budget that went along with it. We now have responsibility for Public Health with a budget of another £8 million that was passed with it, and just earlier this year we took responsibility for Children’s Health with I believe a budget of £3 million pounds for the first year, £4.5 million pounds in a full year; I think that more than accounts for the difference that Councillor Gledhill has pointed out. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor.

 

The Deputy Mayor then invited debate on the whole subject of the item.

 

Councillor Snell stated that over the past year he had attended many meetings with Councillor Jones at leadership level and attended the Budget Review Panel to have the chance to look at every aspect of the budget and the budget setting to find ways of making the Council work more efficiently. Opportunities at this time were given for Members to speak up and bring forward items on the budget, raise any issues or concerns. Councillor Snell stated that everything that Councillor Gledhill had mentioned tonight had not been brought up prior to this budget report and felt it unreasonable to bring them up tonight.

 

Councillor Halden stated a positive point on the budget on how it had been formatted, an example of this was the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee where Officers presented Members with 27 different options on how adult social care could be reformatted with each option having different cost and service implications. Councillor Halden stated this was the perfect way to do this with different options and scenarios available to Members.

 

Councillor G. Rice stated he supported the budget report and identified that Members had all committed to keep a weekly bin collection.

 

Councillor B. Rice stated that ample opportunity had been given to Councillor Gledhill to comment on the budget report after attending nine budget meetings and felt that it was unfair and an insult to Thurrock residents that no mention of his comments were made prior to tonight.

 

Councillor Worrall stated that with regards to Gloriana an executive group had met with Labour and UKIP Members in attendance apart from a conservative group member. It was stated that decisions were made regarding the budget at these meetings and commented that all groups should attend so that comments can be made at that time.

 

Councillor Ray stated that was he never invited to an executive group to discuss the budget so could not comment. He added that he felt the UKIP Party was not offering viable alternatives to the proposed budget as an opposition group.

 

Councillor S. Little stated that cuts had been made especially in Bulphan where there was no longer a library bus and a community café had been started with little financial support from the Council.

 

Councillor J. Kent thanked Members for all the contributions and for the support of Councillor Snell.

 

The Deputy Major asked the Chief Executive to explain the vote recording process in relation to budget and council tax setting.

 

The Chief Executive explained that Council were asked to vote on the recommendations within the report in a series of blocks. Some were required to have a recorded vote. Therefore, the voting would be conducted as follows:

 

•           The Council would vote for recommendation 1.1. This would be unrecorded unless Members requested otherwise.

•           The Council would then vote on recommendations 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 together. This would be a recorded vote.

•           The Council would then vote for recommendations 1.5 to 1.8.3 inclusive en-bloc. This would be unrecorded unless Members requested otherwise.

•           Finally, the Council would vote on recommendations 1.9 to 1.14 en-bloc. This would be a recorded vote.

 

Councillor Gledhill requested that recommendations 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 be recorded individually and that recommendations1.8 to 1.8.3 be voted on separately. This was agreed by Members.

 

The Deputy Mayor invited the Chamber to vote on recommendation 1.1 as printed in the report. All Members present voted in favour of the recommendation, whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared 1.1 to be carried.

 

The Deputy Mayor explained that a recorded vote would take place on recommendation 1.2, the result of which was:

 

For :                 Councillors Tim Aker, Chris Baker, James Baker, Jane Baker, Claire Baldwin, Russell Cherry, Leslie Gamester, Oliver Gerrish, Robert Gledhill, Yash Gupta, Garry Hague, James Halden, Graham Hamilton, Shane Hebb, Cliff Holloway, Victoria Holloway, Barry Johnson, Roy Jones, Tom Kelly, John Kent, Martin Kerin, Charlie Key, Steve Liddiard, Brian Little, Susan Little, Sue MacPherson, Ben Maney, Tunde Ojetola, Bukky Okunade, Barry Palmer, Jane Pothecary, Robert Ray, Joy Redsell, Barbara Rice, Gerald Rice, Andrew Roast, Peter Smith, Graham Snell, Richard Speight, Michael Stone, Pauline Tolson, Kevin Wheeler, Lynn Worrall, Cathy Kent (44)

 

Against  :         (0)

 

Abstain :          (0)

 

Whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared recommendation 1.2 to be carried.

 

The Deputy Mayor explained that a recorded vote would take place on recommendation 1.3, the result of which was:

 

For :                 Councillors Tim Aker, Chris Baker, James Baker, Jane Baker, Claire Baldwin, Russell Cherry, Leslie Gamester, Oliver Gerrish, Yash Gupta, Graham Hamilton, Cliff Holloway, Victoria Holloway,  Roy Jones, John Kent, Martin Kerin, Steve Liddiard, Bukky Okunade, Barry Palmer, Jane Pothecary, Barbara Rice, Gerald Rice, Peter Smith, Graham Snell, Richard Speight, Michael Stone, Kevin Wheeler, Lynn Worrall, Cathy Kent (28)

 

Against :          Councillor Ray (1)

 

Abstain :          Councillors Robert Gledhill, Garry Hague, James Halden, Shane Hebb, Barry Johnson, Tom Kelly, Charlie Key, Brian Little, Susan Little, Sue MacPherson, Ben Maney, Tunde Ojetola, Joy Redsell, Andrew Roast, Pauline Tolson (15)

 

Whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared recommendation 1.3 to be carried.

 

The Deputy Mayor explained that a recorded vote would take place on recommendation 1.4, the result of which was:

 

For :                 Councillors Tim Aker, Chris Baker, James Baker, Jane Baker, Claire Baldwin, Russell Cherry, Leslie Gamester, Oliver Gerrish, Robert Gledhill, Yash Gupta, Garry Hague, James Halden, Graham Hamilton, Shane Hebb, Cliff Holloway, Victoria Holloway, Barry Johnson, Roy Jones, Tom Kelly, John Kent, Martin Kerin, Charlie Key, Steve Liddiard, Brian Little, Susan Little, Sue MacPherson, Ben Maney, Tunde Ojetola, Bukky Okunade, Barry Palmer, Jane Pothecary, Robert Ray, Joy Redsell, Barbara Rice, Gerald Rice, Andrew Roast, Peter Smith, Graham Snell, Richard Speight, Michael Stone, Pauline Tolson, Kevin Wheeler, Lynn Worrall, Cathy Kent (44)

 

Against :          (0)

 

Abstain :          (0)

 

Whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared recommendation 1.4 to be carried.

 

The Deputy Mayor invited the Chamber to vote on recommendation 1.5 to 1.7 as printed in the report. All Members present voted in favour of the recommendations, whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared these to be carried.

 

The Deputy Mayor invited the Chamber to undertake a vote on recommendation 1.8 to 1.8.3 as printed in the report, the result of which was:

 

For                   :           27

Against            :           16

Abstain            :           1

 

Whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared recommendations 1.8 to 1.8.3 to be carried.

 

The Mayor invited the Chamber to undertake a recorded vote on recommendations 1.9 to 1.14 as printed in the report, the result of which was:

 

For :                 Councillors Tim Aker, Chris Baker, James Baker, Jane Baker, Claire Baldwin, Russell Cherry, Leslie Gamester, Oliver Gerrish, Robert Gledhill, Yash Gupta, Garry Hague, James Halden, Graham Hamilton, Shane Hebb, Cliff Holloway, Victoria Holloway, Barry Johnson, Roy Jones, Tom Kelly, John Kent, Martin Kerin, Charlie Key, Steve Liddiard, Brian Little, Susan Little, Sue MacPherson, Ben Maney, Tunde Ojetola, Bukky Okunade, Barry Palmer, Jane Pothecary, Robert Ray, Joy Redsell, Barbara Rice, Gerald Rice, Andrew Roast, Peter Smith, Graham Snell, Richard Speight, Michael Stone, Pauline Tolson, Kevin Wheeler, Lynn Worrall, Cathy Kent (44)

 

Against :          (0)

 

Abstain :          (0)

 

Whereupon the Deputy Mayor declared recommendations 1.9 to 1.14 to be carried.

 

RESOLVED

 

That the Council:

1.1         Considers and acknowledges the Section 151 Officer’s (Director of Finance and IT’s) report on the robustness of the proposed budget, the adequacy of the Council’s reserves and the Reserves Strategy as set out in Appendix 1, including the conditions upon which the following recommendations were made;

 

1.2         Following the recommendations of Corporate Overview and Scrutiny and the Cabinet, agree to a 2% Council Tax increase in respect of Adult Social Care;

 

1.3         Following the recommendations of Corporate Overview and Scrutiny and the Cabinet, agree to a 1.99% Council Tax increase in support of the general budget;

 

1.4         Approve a General Fund net revenue budget for 2016/17 of £110,289,954 allocated to services as set out in paragraph 5.3;

 

1.5         That Cabinet recommend to Council that delegation be granted to the Director of Finance and IT, in consultation with the Chief Executive and Leader of the Council, the authority to make the relevant submissions to government to secure the four year settlement and freedom to use capital receipts for transformation purposes if considered to be in the Council’s best interest;

 

1.6         Approve the Dedicated Schools Grant as set out in section 7 and Appendix 4;

 

1.7         Approve the new General Fund capital schemes as set out in section 9 and Appendix 5;

 

1.8         Delegate to Cabinet:

 

1.8.1     The approval of any expenditure, including loan and equity advances, related to Gloriana Thurrock Ltd developments and these be deemed as part of the capital programme;

 

1.8.2     The ability to agree schemes where it can be evidenced that there is a spend to save opportunity and these be deemed as part of the capital programme; and

 

1.8.3     The ability to agree schemes that use any unbudgeted contributions from third parties, including those by way of grants or developers’ contributions, and these be deemed as part of the capital programme.

Statutory Council Tax Resolution

(Members should note that these recommendations were a result of the previous recommendations above and can be agreed as written or as amended by any changes agreed to those above).

1.9         Calculate that the Council Tax requirement for the Council’s own purposes for 2016/17 is £57,135,138 as set out in the table at paragraph 5.3 of this report.

1.10       That the following amounts be calculated for the year 2016/17 in accordance with Sections 31 to 36 of the Act:

(a)          £390,012,962 being the aggregate of the amounts which the Council estimates for the items set out in Section 31A(2) of the Act.

(b)          £332,877,824 being the aggregate of the amounts which the Council estimates for the items set out in Section 31A(3) of the Act.

(c)          £57,135,138 being the amount by which the aggregate at 1.10(a) above exceeds the aggregate at 1.10(b) above, calculated by the Council in accordance with Section 31A(4) of the Act as its Council Tax requirement for the year. (Item R in the formula in Section 31B of the Act).

(d)          £1,169.46 being the amount at 1.10(c) above (Item R), all divided by Item T (Council Tax Base of 48,856), calculated by the Council, in accordance with Section 31B of the Act, as the basic amount of its Council Tax for the year (including Parish precepts).

(e)          £0 being the aggregate amount of all special items (Parish precepts) referred to in Section 34(1) of the Act.

(f)           £1,169.46 being the amount at (d) above less the result given by dividing the amount at (e) above by Item T, calculated by the Council, in accordance with Section 34(2) of the Act, as the basic amount of its Council Tax for the year for dwellings in those parts of its area to which no Parish precept relates.

1.11       To note that the County Council, the Police Authority and the Fire Authority have issued precepts to the Council in accordance with Section 40 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 for each category of dwellings in the Council’s area as indicated in the tables below.

 

1.12       That the Council, in accordance with Sections 30 and 36 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, hereby sets the aggregate amounts shown in the tables below as the amounts of Council Tax for 2016/17 for each part of its area and for each of the categories of dwellings.

2016/17 COUNCIL TAX FOR THURROCK PURPOSES EXCLUDING ESSEX FIRE AUTHORITY AND ESSEX POLICE AUTHORITY

 

1.13       That it be noted that for the year 2016/17 Essex Police Authority has stated the following amounts in precept issued to the Council for each of the categories of dwellings as follows:

1.14       That it be noted that for the year 2016/17 Essex Fire Authority has stated the following amounts in precept issued to the Council for each of the categories of dwellings as follows:

2016/17 COUNCIL TAX (INCLUDING FIRE AND POLICE AUTHORITY PRECEPTS)