Agenda item
Verbal Update: Capital Programme and Process Report
Minutes:
The Strategic Resources
Accountant introduced the report and stated this updated Members on
the capital process and how the capital programme was formulated.
He began by saying that the capital programme included projects
that would run for between 3 and 5 years, and corporate finance
invited submissions for projects around September. He stated that
these were reviewed for accuracy and purpose at a detailed level,
and were assessed for how the projects fit within the corporate
priorities. He stated that once this was completed the projects
were formulated into papers which went to either the Service,
Property or Digital Board, and were ranked from 1-3, with 1 being
essential projects and 3 being projects that would be nice to have
and could run in the background. He elaborated by stating that once
the submissions had been reviewed by the relevant Board, it was
then ratified and sent to Directors’ Board, before being
agreed by Cabinet and then Full Council. He summarised and stated
that capital programme followed the same timescales as the budget
setting process.
The Chair opened debate and stated this report had come to
Committee due to Councillor Hague’s point at the last meeting
regarding the level of detail and understanding of the previous
Capital Programme report. The Chair felt that in January of the
next municipal year, the programme would be in a good place for a
report to be brought before the Committee, which would have a good
level of detail, as well as a top level overview, which the
Committee could scrutinise. The Strategic Resources Accountant
replied that in regards to the Property Board, many capital
projects were very detailed due to the number of assets, and gave
the example of legionnaire’s testing, as although this was a
small scale project, due to the number of council properties, this
became classified as a capital programme. He added that he felt
there would be the potential to bring larger scale issues such as
council house building to the committee. He felt there was a
balance to be struck between the Committee receiving an overarching
summary of capital programmes and the very detailed submissions
that corporate finance received. He added that criteria could be
put in place so the Committee did not have to scrutinise essential
works or work that would be funded through an external
provider.
Councillor Hague added that in the previous Capital Programme
report, strategic investments were not linked to the corporate
strategy, and did not contain a qualitative assessment of the
return on investment. The Director of Strategy, Communications and
Customer Services replied that due to the comments at the last
Corporate Overview and Scrutiny meeting, strategic investments were
now linked to corporate priorities, as a note had been added to the
Full Council Capital Programme report.
The Chair summarised and asked for a report to be added to next
municipal year’s Work Programme which gave more detail on the
capital programme, and asked for the next Chair to organise this
with the Corporate Finance team.