20 July - Financial Services Report (Part 2)
The Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee moved from
Inflationary Risks
to Racial Inequalities the subject having been moved from the former Communities
Scrutiny Committee.
The Sub-Committee’s report
on Equalities took up 70 pages of the Agenda and Cabinet Member
David Leaf was the first to comment on it but mainly to acknowledge it was “very important”.
He planned to send the finished report to the police.
Councillors Chris Taylor (Conservative) and Stefano Borella (Labour) both spoke
favourably about the report and the importance of the Council responding to
the concerns of the BAME and other minority communities.
The term BAME was used several times by Councillors and repeated here but the
report itself asked that its use be avoided.
Councillor Leaf spoke briefly -
very briefly by his standards - but all we learnt was that
the Medium Term Financial Strategy had been updated and all would be revealed at
the Cabinet Meeting.
Undeterred by his reticence, Labour Leader Stefano Borella, asked what was being done about reducing the
level of complaints and late payment of invoices. No one had the Cabinet Agenda
to hand which had flagged these issues Red but Stefano was promised an answer at
the forthcoming Cabinet meeting. The Finance Director said that the Payments’
Service is a Capita responsibility and there had been some challenges and issues which
had been addressed.
There were brief references to the possibility of Capita staff being moved into the Civic Offices
and a review of the situation is being conducted and expected to be concluded within the
next couple of months. It has already revealed that the number of
in-person
enquiries at the Civic Offices are not about housing as might have been guessed,
but Council Tax.