Issue - meetings

To receive notice of any business not on the agenda which in the opinion of the Chair, by reason of special circumstances, be considered as a matter of urgency.

The Chair asked about the significant mischarging of General Fund costs to the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) that had been highlighted in the Section 114 notice issued by the Council on 22nd November 2022. The Corporate Director of Housing explained that there had been an overcharge to the HRA account for several years; the level of recharge to the HRA had been discovered to be higher than the normal when compared to similar boroughs and it had been found that this had been for services that should fall under the General Fund. A piece of work had been initiated to scrutinise what these recharges looked like and to date a figure of £9.5 million a year since 2019/20 had been calculated. To rectify this, around £40 million would be put back into the HRA account, which would increase reserves although this would have a detrimental effect on the General Fund.

The Chair asked if mischarging had potentially started earlier, and it was confirmed that this could be the case and would be investigated with the Section 151 officer. The Chair asked if this opened the Council to legal challenges and the Corporate Director for Housing explained that as the Council was pro-actively rectifying this it was unlikely. On whether there had been communication with tenants on this issue, the Corporate Director explained that the issue of recharging to the HRA had been raised by the Tenants and Leaseholders Panel, and that they had been advised that the situation was being looked at. The Cabinet Member for Homes explained that this was still an evolving situation, and the numbers were still under review as years before 2019/20 were investigated. The Chair raised concerns that this had only been picked up as part of the ‘Opening the Books’ exercise.