Agenda item

Cabinet endorsed the following recommendations for approval at Full Council:

1.      Approved:

·       No increase to dwelling rents for 2021/22.

·       The 1-year Revenue budget for 2021/22 and 5-year Capital Programme 2021/22 – 2025/26, as detailed in Appendix A1, noting here is no additional borrowing requirement before 2024/25.

·       The Housing Investment Programme (HIP) as shown in the 1-year Revenue budget and 5-year Capital Programme in Appendices A1 and A2

·       The Housing Development Programme as shown in the 1-year Revenue budget and 5-year Capital Programme in Appendices A1 and Appendix A3

·       An in-year draw-down from the HRA General Reserve to fund planned HIP works carried forward from 2020/21 due to Covid restrictions.

·       Approve the delayed draw-down in 2021/22 from general fund reserve, of an agreed 2020/21 budget amendment (£100k) which was previously approved by Full Council Feb 2020, due to delays during the pandemic. This reserve was set aside to finance training for Housing and Landlord Services that would provide in-house skills to retrofit energy efficiency measures to council homes.

2.      Authorised the Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance and Performance, to set service charges in line with the anticipated and actual cost of delivery.

Cabinet:

3.      Approved transfer of the CCTV reserves to a separate reserve (£0.419m).

4.      Approved the acceptance and spending of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Demonstrator grant of £1.29m.

5.      Authorised the Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Women, Families and Homes, the Section 151 officer and the monitoring officer to take all steps necessary to procure and award contracts during 2021/22 to deliver both the capital and revenue investment plans detailed in Appendices A1 and A2 notwithstanding that individual contracts may exceed the key decision threshold.

6.      Authorised the Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Women, Families and Homes to submit appropriate funding applications (including for the carbon retrofit projects), to agree associated grant terms/conditions, and if successful to progress to delivery of these projects via compliant procurement routes.

7.      Authorised the Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration, in consultation with the Section 151 Officer and the Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance and Performance (with appropriate legal and procurement advice), to implement the HRA Development Programme set out in Appendix A3 giving authority to:

·       Commit funding of up to £103.7m on the HRA Development programme;

·       Allocate funding between the ‘developer-led’, ‘land-led’, property conversions and estate regeneration programmes as appropriate;

·       agree sites for the programme;

·       agree financial expenditure and tenure;

·       authorise bidding and accept Homes England grant where deemed applicable;

·       appoint all contractors and professional services associated with the proposed development through a procurement compliant process, subject to progress reports on the HRA Development Programme being brought back to Cabinet on a quarterly basis; and

8.      approve deals for ‘developer-led’ schemes with all deals to be reported as part of the Officer Executive Decision process.

9.      Notes that all delegated authority given above will follow the Officer executive decision making procedure and that all such decisions will be published.