Agenda, decisions and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

·         Councillor Llinos Medi Huws (Isle of Anglesey County Council) with Councillor Gary Pritchard deputising;

·         Graham Boase (Denbighshire Council) with Gary Williams deputising;

·         Dafydd Gibbard (Cyngor Gwynedd) with Geraint Owen deputising;

Deputies were welcomed to the meeting.

To receive any declaration of Personal Interest.

No declarations of personal interest were received.

To note any items that are a matter of urgency in the view of the Chair for consideration.

None to note.

The Chair shall propose that the minutes of the previous meeting held on 24 of November 2023 be signed as a true record.

The Chair signed the minutes of the previous meeting, held on 24 November 2023, as a true record.

To approve the Budget for 2024/25 for the North Wales Corporate Joint Committee.

1.    To approve the Budget for 2024/5 for the North Wales Corporate Joint Committee (CJC) as presented in the appendix to the report.  To approve the budget as noted below:-

2.    To approve the levy on the constituent authorities, as noted below:-

The report was submitted by Dewi Morgan, Chief Finance Officer.

RESOLVED:

1.    To approve the Budget for 2024/5 for the North Wales Corporate Joint Committee (CJC) as presented in the appendix to the report.  To approve the budget as noted below:-

2.    To approve the levy on the constituent authorities, as noted below:-

DISCUSSION

1.    The Budget

It was noted that a significant amount of money had been earmarked for the Strategic Planning element and it was asked if that meant doing away with some of the work that the councils currently carried out individually, thereby creating savings for the councils, or would it mean more work and more cost to the councils. In response, it was noted:-

·         That it was important to find a way to be able to represent value for money for the authorities locally from the existence of the CJC.

·         It was not yet entirely clear what the long-term objective to aim for in terms of Welsh Government would be, but there were certainly opportunities here to collaborate more effectively regionally on certain elements of work.  E.g. there were discussions in place about the possibility of regional collaboration on matters such as energy procurement to see whether there was a way of being more financially effective, so that the savings would feed back to councils locally for core services.

·         That it was difficult to say at the moment, particularly from the Strategic Planning perspective, what the benefits would be for the particular stakeholders, but that there were elements of work that were currently being duplicated across the counties on an evidentiary basis for their own individual plans.

·         That it was hoped that, in centralising some parts of that evidence, it would then be easier to obtain evidence at a local level by working regionally.

·         That time would tell what the knock-on effect of that would be in terms of any particular efficiency in the areas within the region, but that would certainly be the ambition, that we would be in a position of being able to share information and evidence to make the local processes easier.

It was noted that it was important to keep track of this element.

Concern was raised about the proposed 6% inflation estimate for wages in 2024/25, but it was explained that that was funded out of reserves and that there would be no increase in partner contributions.

It was noted that there was a sense within the councils that the Corporate Joint Committee was optional, rather than a legislative responsibility, and it was warned that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.