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DECLARATION OF INTERESTS Minutes: None received. |
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CALL-IN PROTOCOL FOR THE BABERGH CABINET DECISION 7 FEBRUARY 2022 PDF 126 KB Members are asked to approve the Call-in Protocol. Minutes: 27.1 Councillor Jane Gould proposed that the protocol for the Call-in Procedure be approved.
27.2 Councillor Adrian Osborne seconded this motion.
By a unanimous vote.
It was RESOLVED: - That Members considered and agreed the scope of the Call-in.
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Decision made by Cabinet on 7 February 2022 in respect of the following report was called in for consideration by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee in accordance with the Council’s Scrutiny Procedure Rules as detailed in the Constitution: Part 3: Scrutiny Procedure Rules, Section 12 to Section 15. Minutes: 28.1 Councillor Melanie Barrett, as Lead Signatory, was unable to vote on this item and was not acting in her role as a Member of the Committee.
28.2 The Chair invited the Lead Signatory, Councillor Melanie Barrett, to present her reasons for the Call-in.
28.3 The Lead Signatory presented the following reasons:
28.4 I called this into the Overview and Scrutiny Committee because I believe that, as the Chair has outlined in my submission to the committee, this is such a significant amount of money that is proposed to be spent. When I first read it, I thought it may have been £50,000, but it was indeed £250,000 to be spent on half of the workspace that we previously occupied. So, the benefits appear to be a net saving of £88,000. However, does this saving come at a cost to service delivery and our residents? That is also a concern. Although the majority of my reason for referring is due to the lack of scrutiny on how that money will be allocated. The decision cannot be sensibly made on such a ballpark figure. Previous history of calculations has shown this, and there is no detail. Having looked at papers for the budget I note that in that paper under the General Fund budget they talked about the key elements of the Council's responsibility, and one of those is cost management. I understand there may also be a margin of error within these calculations that we cannot assess until we are given more detail. In the floor plan I see that there is a branding graphics wall, a green graphics wall, and a full height green wall. I presume there would be costs available for us to understand how that cost could amount to half a million pounds. That would have helped the Cabinet to make better use of their questions to understand how that figure was arrived at. I understand that some of the cost is sound proofing meeting rooms, but that is not clear from the paper whether the landlord has been approached to see if they would shoulder some of those costs. That should be our first option to make sure that the landlord was going to share those costs. It is unbalanced as there were potential costs that were looked at as a ballpark figure. But there has not been an assessment of the impacts on productivity and output. It seems that the primary move is to serve the needs officers, and residents will only benefit indirectly. There is a saving, but just because there is saving that does not mean this is free money that can be unaccounted for. There are always costs, there is other options that we could spend the money on. To look at this in some context for this expenditure of £250,000, some Councillors spent the last 16 months arguing the case for imposing parking charges where it was estimated that we would raise £212,000, but the same degree of scrutiny has ... view the full minutes text for item 28.
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BCa/21/38 ACCOMMODATION AND AGILE STRATEGY - ENDEAVOUR HOUSE PDF 337 KB Cabinet Decision Notice, Cabinet Report and reference to recorded minutes are attached. The Lead Member and Lead Officer are invited to attend and respond to questions.
Draft minutes to follow and to be tabled at the meeting. Additional documents:
Minutes: See the previous item. |