Agenda item

In accordance with Council Procedure Rule 9.7, Councillor B Coult asked the following question:

At the Environment and Sustainable Communities Scrutiny Committee this month it was revealed that last year there was a building and facilities overspend of £67,000 on 8 named buildings.

With 57 council buildings not in use this year, can the portfolio holder explain the logic of having a budget of only £31,198 specifically allocated to these 57 properties, and inform council of the current projected year-end spend on these buildings?

Councillor K Shaw, Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Housing responded to thanked Cllr Coult for her question and explained that the Council were constantly reviewing its operational estates and had considerably reduced the number of buildings, generated millions of pounds in capital receipts and made significant revenue savings since 2009.

The 57 buildings referred to in the question were currently under review. The Council sought to spend as little as possible on the properties identified and of those 57:

·        6 were in process of reoccupation;

·        4 were being held for strategic project delivery;

·        18 were being marketed;

·        16 were being prepared for marketing; and

·        7 were programmed for demolition

Whilst some spend on unoccupied buildings was essential, inevitably there were sometimes unforeseen circumstances whereby additional expenditure was required. The Council would continue to keep this to a minimum by taking steps to bring buildings back into use or declaring properties surplus as soon as possible.

In response to the second part of the question, Councillor K Shaw explained that expenditure on buildings was difficult to predict and any shortfall would be met from other service budgets. Further work would be carried out to align property related budgets as part of the introduction of a corporate landlord model for managing the council’s estate.