To note the above titled item.

Andrew Vallance explained to the Committee that the Capital Strategy was in draft format and would form part of the Budget. Borrowing was a last resort for RBWM, with the report setting out the national financial context along with RBWMs own financial context. The report also set out the council’s priorities, processes that were in place along with the establishment of a Capital Programme Board.

Councillor Story asked about the Capital Programme Board, how many times it had met and the work that it had undertaken.

Andrew Vallance said that there had been a meeting of the Board every 2-3 weeks and it had reviewed this years and future years capital programme. The aim was to try and finance the programme through other sources rather than relying heavily on borrowing.

Jonathan Gooding (Deloitte) left the meeting.

Councillor L Jones pointed out that there was a lot of information on capital asset disposal, and wanted to know what the process was to inform all members. She was interested to know when the updated capital programme would be available and how things like the parking provision and the figures for this would be decided on. Regarding priorities, Councillor L Jones asked what the objectives of RBWM were and how they used in relation to the capital programme.

Andrew Vallance said that on asset disposal, it would be individual papers on individual decisions that would be received through Cabinet. Parking would be a key area for capital and revenue within the Budget, with a significant amount of work was currently taking place. However, the loss of parking demand was a significant factor on the revenue budget. The new Capital Programme Board had looked to address items that were wrongly classed as capital when they were actually revenue items. One example of this was the cleaning of pictures in RBWMs collection, which should have been considered as routine maintenance instead of capital. The purpose of the report was to align capital expenditure with the objectives in RBWMs corporate strategy.

The Chairman said that it was important for savings to be made and asked if there was a specific paper on savings coming to the Committee. Andrew Vallance explained that saving schemes were part of the Transformation Strategy and was part of various reports that the Committee would be looking at in future.

Councillor Sharpe said that he was concerned about the risks in this strategy and asked what the Head of Finance was most concerned about or saw as the biggest risk.

Andrew Vallance commented that his main concern was the revenue budget and also volatility in local government finance. Interest rates were not currently a concern.

Councillor Hilton said that there was a full review of the capital programme at the beginning of the year, where a significant amount of money was taken out that was not needed.

Councillor L Jones asked if there was any way of highlighting the priorities and objectives of RBWM in the paper. Andrew Vallance explained that the current priorities of the council were set out in paragraph 6.4 of the report.

Adele Taylor said that £2.5 million had been taken out of the capital programme, which was the start of the work of the Capital Programme Board. There was a section on capital in the budget monitoring reports that were considered by Cabinet.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Audit and Governance Committee noted the report and commented on:

i)             The draft Capital Strategy set out in Appendix A.