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Agenda and minutes

Venue: This meeting will be held remotely. View directions

Contact: Simon Trevaskis  Email: simon.trevaskis@croydon.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

18/22

Minutes of the Previous Meeting pdf icon PDF 577 KB

To approve the minutes of the meeting held on 1 March 2022 as an accurate record.

 

Minutes:

The minutes of the meeting held on 1 March 2022 were agreed as an accurate record.

 

19/22

Disclosure of Interests

Members and co-opted Members of the Council are reminded that, in accordance with the Council’s Code of Conduct and the statutory provisions of the Localism Act, they are required to consider in advance of each meeting whether they have a disclosable pecuniary interest (DPI), an other registrable interest (ORI) or a non-registrable interest (NRI) in relation to any matter on the agenda.  If advice is needed, Members should contact the Monitoring Officer in good time before the meeting.  

 

If any Member or co-opted Member of the Council identifies a DPI or ORI which they have not already registered on the Council’s register of interests or which requires updating, they should complete the disclosure form which can be obtained from Democratic Services at any time, copies of which will be available at the meeting for return to the Monitoring Officer.

 

Members and co-opted Members are required to disclose any DPIs and ORIs at the meeting: -

 

·     Where the matter relates to a DPI they may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must not stay in the meeting unless granted a dispensation.  

 

·     Where the matter relates to an ORI they may not vote on the matter unless granted a dispensation.   

 

·     Where a Member or co-opted Member has an NRI which directly relates to their financial interest or wellbeing, or that of a relative or close associate, they must disclose the interest at the meeting, may not take part in any discussion or vote on the matter and must not stay in the meeting unless granted a dispensation.  Where a matter affects the NRI of a Member or co-opted Member, section 9 of Appendix B of the Code of Conduct sets out the test which must be applied by the Member to decide whether disclosure is required.

 

The Chair will invite Members to make their disclosure orally at the commencement of Agenda item 3, to be recorded in the minutes.

 

Minutes:

There were no disclosures of interest made at the meeting.

 

20/22

Urgent Business (if any)

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.

 

Minutes:

Although there were no formal urgent items of business for consideration by the Scrutiny & Overview Committee at the meeting, the Chair had requested a brief verbal update for the meeting on the status of the 2021-22 accounts.

The Council’s Corporate Director for Resources, Jane West, advised the Committee that the Finance team was currently working on closing the 2021-22 accounts and at present it was forecasted that once complete, there would be a small underspend which could be transferred to the Council’s reserves.

Regarding the issue concerning the accounting treatment of some of the historic expenditure for Croydon Affordable Homes, it was confirmed that this was still to be resolved and discussions continued with the External Auditor. Once this issue had been resolved the 2019-20 account could be closed, allowing the 2020-21 accounts to be audited.

In response to a question about the progress made with improving the Council’s budget monitoring systems, it was confirmed that although significant progress had been made over the past year, work was ongoing to ensure that staff with responsibility for budget monitoring had the necessary skill sets to provide effective monitoring. At present there was focus on reviewing the budget monitoring systems available within the My Resources software, with a view to increasing the amount of monitoring completed within the system.

Resolved: The Scrutiny and Overview Committee resolved to note the progress update on the delivery of the Council’s budget.

 

21/22

Call-In: Property Disposals as part of the Interim Asset Disposal Strategy pdf icon PDF 355 KB

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee is asked to consider and respond to the Call-In in accordance with the procedure set out in the Council’s constitution.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee considered a call-in request as set out on pages 5 to 38 of the agenda and the supplementary agenda concerning the decision to dispose of properties in New Addington. In introducing the item, the Chair explained the process for considering a call-in, confirming that the Committee needed to agree whether to review the decision and if it was decided to proceed, to confirm how much time it wished to allocate for the discussion of the item. The Committee agreed that it would review the decision and allocated one hour for its consideration.

The Chair went on to explain that there were three outcomes the Committee could reach following its review of the decision. These were: -

1.     That no further action was necessary and the decision could be implemented as originally intended.

2.     To refer the decision to the Cabinet for its consideration, outlining the nature of the Committee’s concerns

3.     To refer the decision to Council, if the Committee considered that the decision taken was outside of the Budget and Policy Framework.

At the outset of the item the Chair gave Councillor Andy Stranack, as the spokesperson for the call-in, the opportunity to outline his concerns on the original decision. Councillor Stranack introduced Zoe Graham, the Welfare Officer at the New Addington Boxing Club, to explain how the disposal  of the Addington Community Centre would impact upon the club. It was advised that the boxing club had been in existence for 50 years and in that time had move location within the local area four times, most recently to its current temporary home in the Addington Community Centre.

The boxing club was staffed by volunteers and had a predominately local, diverse membership, with its 250 members being from different backgrounds and having differing levels of ability. The club was open to children from 7 years old and helped its members in finding work and provided support for young people in avoiding the possible involvement in crime. Support was requested from the Council to assist the boxing club with finding a new venue once the disposal of the community centre had been completed.

Councillor Stranack followed up the introduction from the boxing club highlighting the difficulty of finding a new home for the club in the local area and questioning whether there had been any assessment of the potential impact on the local community if it lost the club.  Concern was also raised about the masterplan produced for New Addington and whether the asset disposal would help the Council to meet these aims and achieve best value for council taxpayers.

Following the introduction, the Cabinet Member for Resources and Financial Governance, Councillor Callton Young, was given the opportunity to respond, highlighting that the Council had opened the new £25m leisure centre in New Addington in 2020 as part of the masterplan for the area. The next stage of the plan was the provision of a health and wellbeing centre, which would be delivered by the NHS who would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21/22

22/22

Annual Scrutiny Report pdf icon PDF 90 KB

The Scrutiny and Overview Committee is asked to: -

1.     Approve the draft version of the Annual Scrutiny Report.

2.     Consider whether there is any other information that should be added to the final version to be presented to the Council in June 2022.

3.     To note that any amendments made as a result of the comments of the Committee will be agreed by the three Scrutiny Chairs, to meet the timeline for delivery to the Council meeting.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee considered a draft version of the Scrutiny Annual Report for 2021-22, as set out on pages 63 to 104 of the agenda.  A draft of the Annual Report had been included on the agenda to give the present members of the Committee the opportunity to comment on the content prior to the Council elections in May 2022.

It was agreed that the report presented a good summary of the work carried out by Scrutiny over the past year and thanks was given to the officers for their work in preparation of the report. It was agreed that it would be left with the Scrutiny Chairs to agree any final amendments before it was submitted to Council in July.

At the conclusion of this item the Chair thanked the Leader, the Cabinet Members and officers for their participation in the budget scrutiny process over the course of the past year, noting that the increase transparency was welcomed.

 

23/22

Exclusion of the Press and Public

The following motion is to be moved and seconded where it is proposed to exclude the press and public from the remainder of a meeting:

 

“That, under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act, 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information falling within those paragraphs indicated in Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended.”

 

 

Minutes:

This motion was not required and all discussion of the Call-In item was held in a public session.