Agenda and draft minutes

Cabinet Members Laura Wright and Paul Griffiths. Councillors Clare Werrett and Phil Murphy.

None.

Cabinet Member Ben Callard and Jonathan Davies introduced the report and answered the members’ questions with Peter Davies:

What are the principal factors that have reduced the projected 2026-27 budget gap from £13.6 million to £11.5 million, and is that reduction sustainable? Are there further proposals to narrow the gap, and how is this reflected in the four-year planning range?

A major factor is the way demand pressures have been treated in the modelling. Demand pressures are additional costs arising from increased demand for services such as social care, Additional Learning Needs support and waste collections, beyond normal pay and price inflation. Instead of automatically building assumed demand growth into the 2027-28 forecast, services are now required to provide evidence of the pressures they expect to face. They must demonstrate activity levels, unit costs and how they plan to mitigate demand. This creates a stronger challenge process and avoids relying on broad assumptions. The intention is to understand and test pressures in detail before incorporating them into budget forecasts, rather than accepting them automatically. The same approach is being applied across the four-year planning period so that future assumptions are more evidence-based and sustainable.

Does the budget timetable provide sufficient opportunity for elected members to scrutinise and influence the budget-setting process?

The process has been brought forward by around two weeks compared with previous years. This gives officers more time to gather and test information while maintaining robust challenge through the finance team, senior leadership and scrutiny committees. The timetable is considered to contain all the necessary stages for scrutiny and challenge before draft budget proposals are developed. However, there remains uncertainty because the council depends on funding information from Welsh Government, which in turn depends on decisions taken by the UK Government. This means that much of the key information does not become clear until late November or December, creating pressure on the timetable. Greater certainty through multi-year settlements would improve longer-term planning, but within the current system the timetable is considered workable and should allow the budget to be agreed before the local elections in May.

The report identifies significant financial risks, but how will those risks actually be resolved? The council faces a four-year funding gap that could reach £31.4 million in the worst-case scenario. What will be done to address this?

The current report is intended to provide an updated financial planning framework rather than set out the solutions. Detailed responses to the budget challenge will come through the draft budget process. Compared with recent years, the position has improved significantly, with a potential budget gap of £6.5 million in the adverse scenario rather than the much larger gaps faced previously. The council intends to manage the challenge through robust scrutiny of service pressures, savings proposals, income opportunities, demand management measures, and the wider "For Purpose on Purpose" change programme. The financial outlook remains uncertain and will be refined as more information becomes available from UK and Welsh Government budgets.

School deficits are running ahead of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

Councillors Strong, Howells, Crook, Garratt and Buckler noted that they are members of the Planning Committee.

Andrew Jones delivered a presentation and answered the members’ questions:

Now that the planning and heritage enforcement teams are back to full staffing levels, are there still any outstanding enforcement cases that have not been progressed, and are you confident that performance can improve from "fair" to consistently "good"?

Both the enforcement and heritage teams are now at full complement. A new Principal Planning Enforcement Officer has been appointed and the Principal Heritage Officer role has been strengthened, with both officers forming part of the service leadership team. While performance has occasionally reached the "good" category already, a single complex case can sometimes move an indicator back into "fair". The service is confident that several planned improvements will help achieve more consistent performance. These include a new enforcement policy, better reporting systems for the public, a more structured triage system for cases, quarterly reporting to Planning Committee, greater use of enforcement warning notices, and specialist enforcement training for officers.

How will the new enforcement policy improve the service?

The policy will introduce a more intuitive reporting process, allowing members of the public, councillors and community councils to provide better quality information from the outset. This should reduce delays caused by officers having to obtain further details after a complaint is received. It will also introduce a formal triage system for high, medium and low-priority cases, with clear timescales for responding to each category. Quarterly updates to Planning Committee will improve transparency and accountability, particularly for long-running cases. The policy will also support increased use of enforcement warning notices, which can secure action more quickly by requiring retrospective planning applications where appropriate.

What other actions are being taken to strengthen enforcement activity?

Joint training has been arranged with Trading Standards and Licensing for November. This will focus on evidence gathering and investigative procedures, particularly for complex land-use cases where identifying the responsible party can be difficult. The training is intended to improve the collection of admissible evidence and strengthen the council's ability to pursue enforcement action and prosecutions where necessary.

Several actions listed in previous reports appear again in this year's report. Are there timescales for completing them and what progress has been made?

Most actions are progressing as planned. The digitisation of historic planning and enforcement records was always expected to take several years because of the volume of records involved. Scanning work has largely been completed, but further work is needed to map records digitally and carry out data quality checks. Funding secured through external projects has accelerated some elements of this work. The Buildings at Risk Strategy is also a long-term programme rather than a one-year project. Progress has been slower because of staffing vacancies, but with the heritage team now fully staffed it is expected to accelerate over the next year. Professional accreditation work is almost complete, with only one remaining officer still requiring formal delegation from Cadw. The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Members’ questions to be sent to officers for responses – ACTION

24th November 2026 at 10.00am.