Decisions

The Cabinet

·      Noted the strategic decision to migrate to cloud services for relevant council systems and the benefits associated with this including the avoidance of significant hardware refresh costs and the opportunities re ongoing revenue cost savings, future flexibility and efficiency for BCC.

•   Noted the critical timescales and hard deadlines for the move to cloud including the end of the council’s current hosting arrangements in November 2018.

•   Agreed to commit to spend no more than £1.055m in capital, over the next two years with £457k in 2017/18 and £598k in 2018/19 from existing capital funding that decommissions current hosting arrangements and transfer servers into the Cloud. (Until final design and procurement activity, all identified costs are best estimate.)

•   Agreed to enter into new contracts at an annual recurring cost of £1,445m for cloud services. This will allow implementation of the preferred solution based on the outline business case.

• Agreed to extend existing, or implement new, contracts for:

-Disaster Recovery & Back up,

- Hardware Maintenance

for current data centre arrangements to ensure continuity of services during transition to cloud period. Exact value of these contracts will be subject to final design, but expected value in the order of £500k.

• Provided delegated approval of procurement activities and final spend to IT Service Director in consultation with Portfolio Holder.

The Cabinet noted the draft Vision and Objectives and that this strategy aimed to,

• provide greater detail for the One City Plan theme of a ‘Prosperous and Inclusive Economy’

• enable The Mayor to express his rationale for inclusion and sustainability, together with analysis of inclusion as a driver of economic growth

• identify a pipeline of investments to develop inclusive and sustainable economic growth

• enable monitoring and measuring of successful outcomes

That Cabinet noted

·  The forecast revenue overspend at period 7 of £0.9m

• That Cabinet noted that Strategic and Service Directors continued to review the levels of over and explore further mitigations to remain within the directorate service allocations for 2017/18.

• That Cabinet considered and noted the progress against planned efficiency savings.

• That Cabinet noted current forecast capital expenditure of £179.0m, which was £56.7m below the budgeted capital programme for the year.

That Cabinet considered and approved the business  plans of following trading companies, being:

1.1.            Bristol Holding Ltd. (company number 09485669) attached as Appendix F1;

1.2.            Bristol Waste Company Limited (company number 09472624) – attached as Appendix F2; and Exempt Appendix G2;

That Cabinet approved to allocate earmarked funds set aside (up to 1.5m) under the current capital programme (PL22) in order to carry out required works, including health and safety works on existing waste premises and  authority be delegated  to Head of Asset Management / PropertyDeputy Mayor  and Cabinet member for Finance, Governance and Performance for the agreed works. 

The Mayor recommends that Full Council agreed;

1. That an estimated deficit at 31 March 2018 on the Council Tax element of the Collection Fund of £37k be declared for 2017/18 and shared between this Council, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Avon and Somerset and the Avon Fire and Rescue Service in proportion to their 2017/18 precepts on the Collection Fund.

2. That an estimated deficit at 31 March 2018 on the Non-Domestic Rates (NDR) element of the Collection Fund of £13.976m be declared for 2017/18 and shared between this Council, the Secretary of State, Avon Fire and Rescue Service and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) in proportion to the appropriate year demands (For 2017/18: Bristol 94%, WECA 4%, Avon Fire and Rescue Service 1%. For prior years, Bristol 49%, Secretary of State 50%, Avon Fire and Rescue Service 1%).

Cabinet agreed to proceed with the refinancing of the Hengrove Leisure Centre PFI. Cabinet:

a) agreed that the council’s share of the financial gain should be received by the council as a lump sum following financial close of the refinancing;

b) approved the terms of the following Refinancing Documents (as further defined and listed in Appendix G):

a. deed of variation of the Hengrove Leisure Centre PFI Project Agreement (the “Deed of Variation”);

b. the Authority Direct Agreement;

c. certificates issued in accordance with the Local Government (Contracts) Act 1997;

d. any and all other contractual documentation which may be necessary or desirable to conclude the negotiations and achieve financial close of the refinancing of Hengrove Leisure Centre PFI;

c) in consultation with the Deputy Mayor and Cabinet member for Finance, Governance and Performance, authorising the Service Director of Finance (Chief Finance Officer and s151 officer), or Service Director: Legal and Democratic Services (Monitoring Officer), to approve, sign and issue certificates in accordance with section 3 of the Local Government (Contracts) Act 1997 in relation to the Deed of Variation and the Authority Direct Agreement and to take any such other steps in relation thereto as may be necessary or desirable; and

d) authorised the duly authorised legal officers under the council’s Scheme of Delegation to:

a. affix the council’s seal to the Deed of Variation and the Authority Direct Agreement; and

b. approve, sign and or execute any and all other documentation which may be necessary or desirable to conclude the negotiations and to achieve financial close of the refinancing.

Authority was delegated to the Head of Culture in consultation with the Monitoring Officer, the S 151 Officer and Executive Member to sign the agreement for the external funding and to spend the funding as outlined in the business plans for the Museums and for Museum Development South West.

To approve the priorities and actions as set out in the draft Corporate Parenting Strategy 2018 (Appendix A) and finalise the Strategy on that basis.

To note the progress on the delivery of Bristol’s Corporate Parenting Strategy 2015

To support the presentation of the new Strategy at Full Council