29 October - A little more from the Cabinet meeting
After the pot hole row
following Daniel Francis MP’s alleged misrepresentation of the facts to
Parliament the Cabinet moved on to Data and Artificial Intelligence. The aim is
to reduce duplication of effort and achieve less need for residents to repeat themselves
every time they contact the Council about an issue. AI will not be allowed to take decisions.
Councillor Jeremy Fosten (Labour, Belvedere) voiced concerns but the Leader said
everything would be monitored through human intervention and caution would be
exercised. The Cabinet decided to adopt the new data strategy.
The Council earned a “significant” sum last year from disposing of its assets
and leasing them and this year it will be much the same; around £6 million.
A report on health issues said that maintaining sexual health has become very expensive. Providing contraceptives results in a pay back dividend of about nine times.
HIV is thought to be under-diagnosed and STD rates
are not good. As has been noted before, the north of the borough fares
particularly poorly.
The final 50 minutes of the webcast provided very little information and by
itself the above few lines barely warrant a blog; therefore, with the aid of
A.N. Other the following has been extracted from the Agenda and other sources.
• The current total overspend is £2·184 million
• The Capital programme is £65·763 million compared to a budget of £68·254 million, an underspend of £2·491 million.
• Adult Social Care is £3·621 million overspent.
• Children’s Services are forecasting an overspend of £1·344 million.
• Education is forecasting an overspend of £0·445 million.
• The Dedicated Schools Grant is forecasting an overspend of £5.943 million.
• Finance and Corporate Services is forecasting an overspend of £0·767 million.
• The Place Directorate is forecasting an underspend of £0·658 million.
• Corporate budgets are forecasting an underspend of £2·890 million.
• The Chief Executive’s Office is forecasting a breakeven position.
• (No one asked the Chief Financial Officer to explain the reasons for the
variances.)
• Council employees were given a 3·2% pay rise.
• The newly
formed Transformation Team was given a startup budget of £4·8 million. The
newly appointed Deputy
Director of Transformation Ayesha Hakim Rahman has a salary package of £151,750
and her three assistants are on a combined salary of £188,000. They have yet to
be given a financial savings target.
• Reserves are due to fall £5·323 million
because they are funding overspends and mask their severity.
• They paid back £1 million of their Public Works Loan Board loans
leaving a mere £229·615 million to go.
• BexleyCo’s 2025 Business Plan assumes zero profit and it continues to be baled out by the Council. Their houses are simply not selling due to the difficulty faced by moderate earners in getting mortgages.