Agenda item

10.05

The Assistant Chief Executive & Chief Finance Officer will give a verbal update on key issues.

The Assistant Chief Executive & Chief Finance Officer gave an update on key work areas of the directorate. The following points were noted;

Chief Executive’s Office

The Local Governments Resource Review has been a key item for the team.

Pensions: We have been notified that we will soon receive details of the content of the new pensions legislation. There are two issues:

1. The government hopes to recoup £900 million in savings. The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a funded scheme, so there is a commitment to treat this separately to other public sector schemes. Local Government Group (LG Group) has put forward an alternative proposal.

2. We are also awaiting details of how the scheme will be redesigned around the findings of the Hutton Report.

It was asked what freedom there was to vary from central government on pensions. It was responded that there was none as the Oxfordshire Pension Fund is part of the Local Government Pension Scheme.

Human Resources

• In 2010 there were 79 redundancies. We have managed to keep this number relatively low by managing this early on through natural turnover.

• In 2011 the number of redundancies has increased as planned in business strategies.

• HR has also been working on a single council wide pay policy.

Councillor Brighouse asked  a council-wide scheme will include teachers, as a different method of pay negotiation is built into their contract and over which governing bodies have some control. Sue Scane AGREED to investigate and send a response to the Committee.

Sue Scane AGREED to provide the Committee with details of how many early or ill health retirements there have been.

Law and Governance

Recently it has been business as usual with some specific high profile cases such as the Ardley incinerator case. We are facing a personal hearing on the unsuccessful appeal against the appeal which went in Viridor’s favour.

It is expected that this hearing will be the conclusion of the case and is likely to take place in December. In the meantime it continues to cost the council each month under the terms of our contract.

The need for foreign exchange when the case is resolved was noted and the potential to purchase Euros in advance. Whilst this had been investigated, but requires a fixed date to reserve Euros which is too much of a risk given the current situation.

Strategy and Communications

• The past few months have been dominated by the restructure which is now in place. Claire Phillips AGREED to circulate details of this to the Committee.

• Big Society Fund assessment process underway for the second round is underway.

Finance and Audit

The Audit Commission has recently approved the 2010/2011 accounts. The team were praised for their working papers.

The Committee acknowledged the work of Sue Scane and her team in improving the accounts.

Repatriation

Transfer of repatriations went well. The public turned out in large numbers. The location was good to accommodate the numbers. The national and local news coverage was positive.

The Committee acknowledged the hard work of the team and, good cooperation across parish, district and county councils with the police and the RAF.