The Deputy Leader opened the report and stated it was found on pages 15-28 of the agenda. He began by stating that every Council was statutorily obliged to balance the books, but Thurrock had achieved more. He commented that the Medium Term Financial Strategy projected a four year balanced budget, which meant a seven year total, and added that the Council were not just balancing the budget, but were running a surplus, which could be invested in services. He described some of the services which were being invested in such as £7million for a new bin fleet to tackle bin collection problems; £0.5million for mental health services; and £1.6million to fight crime and deal with social behaviour. He stated that the Council’s rainy day funds had also increased by 38%, but earmarked money was being spent on public projects. He added that he felt recent press reports had been disingenuous as they had included earmarked money, which was designed to be spent.

The Deputy Leader commented that Thurrock was a low-tax council and were finding new alternatives to make money, and this was funding capital programmes such as £49million on widening the A13; £23million on new housing stock; £7million on additional school spaces; and £20million redeveloping areas such as Grays and Purfleet. He thanked the Director of Finance and IT, the Commercial Director and other directors, as well other officers, volunteers, the community, private sector and Members for their hard work and collaborative effort. He felt that the collaboration between the council, the private sector and the community made services more efficient and allowed for reform. He added that the council would continue to reform, as well review tax and commercial delivery, without burdening tax payers. He stated that the Council Spending Review would be reformatted to focus on quality services and outreach, as this had proven successful for Grangewaters, Thameside and children’s centres. He stated that the strategy would put emphasis on volunteers and other partners to focus on quality. The Deputy Leader added that the scorecards were achieving a 66% pass rate and 80% of services were right first time, and stated that Cabinet would be continuing to improve quality using the Council Spending Review.

RESOLVED: That Cabinet:

1. Noted that the General Fund net expenditure has been met within the overall budget envelope and the General Fund Balance has been maintained at £11.000m

2. Noted that the balance on the Housing Revenue Account Reserve has been maintained at £2.175m;

3. Noted that there was a total of £65.945m in capital expenditure and some of the key projects have been set out in section 5.