This week saw the Full meeting of the Council come round again. The last one before the Council goes into recess for July.
It was a packed agenda again so I won’t even attempt to recount it all here. The number of agenda items does, in my view, show just how busy you all our delivering for our communities.
I will pick up on a few key issues:
Members received reports on our year-end financial position for 2024/25. There is a lot of information contained within the report but the headline figure is that there was an overall underspend of £1.905 million, 0.6%. With an overall revenue budget of over £300 million, this is testament to the robust financial management that you all exercise in the work that you do. Completing the accounts themselves also requires a lot of hard work from you all – getting this all done within three months of year-end, in an organisation as complex as ours, is an achievement.
Our budget approach for next year and beyond, was also agreed. “Enabling the Council of the Future to Thrive” is something you’ll be hearing about throughout the year.
There were reports on a number of measures being taken to address the housing emergency, demonstrating the priority being given to addressing this challenge for our area.
Finally, I’ll mention the approval of the Corporate Improvement Plan 2025 – 2028. The Council has a statutory duty to secure Best Value, which includes a continuous improvement duty. I talked before about the positive report we received from the Accounts Commission and this plan aims to build upon the strengths highlighted. Actions focus on the areas of:
- Transformation
- Performance management
- Community engagement
- Finance
- Leadership and workforce
You can read more about the plan (item 20).
Like many of you I’ll be taking some time off over the summer so next week Executive Director, Douglas Hendry will be doing this update.
Have a lovely weekend.
Pippa
Pippa Milne
Chief Executive
.
