1.    Pursuant to Paragraph 10 of the Council Procedure Rules the following question was put by Mr Bernard Brown and answered by Councillor Dixon.

Question:It was reported to both Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) and Cabinet that there is already a £474,000 shortfall in the Financial Stability Programme (FSP) outcomes for the current year, Year One of a five-year plan.

A key part of the FSP is savings to Rother’s budget by devolving substantial discretionary services to Town and Parish Councils.  It is understood that negotiations with Bexhill Town Council (BTC) will be undertaken in the financial year 2022/2023 with savings to Rother becoming realised in 2023/2024.

The Mid Term Financial Plan reported on at OSC has a savings forecast from the FSP for 2023/24 of £2,137,000.

How much of this £2,137,000 is forecast to come from the devolution of discretionary services to BTC?

Answer: The answer is clearly set out in Appendix A of the Medium Term Financial report to Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Cabinet on 22 November 2021 and 13 December 2021 respectively but for clarity, the Council estimates that savings of £1,660,000 will be delivered through devolution to Parish and Town Councils, or other suitable community groups. It should also be noted that this includes services in some rural parishes as well as in Bexhill.   That process has recently begun and at this stage of engagement it is too early to update on progress, but that will be reported through the regular financial updates to Members in due course.

Supplementary Oral Question: At Cabinet, Councillor Dixon said without qualification, public conveniences will be maintained.  If the cost to the parish and town councils of devolution of discretionary services is too great and they refuse to take them, how will this be dealt with in the financial stability plan?  If the councils think it is to onerous, what is plan B for dealing with this?

Answer: I apologise if you do not think we have answered the question sufficiently and just a note on that, we cannot actually divide out Bexhill from the rest of the district as some of the contracts are just district wide they are not specified into various parishes. Clearly that work will have to be done as we get further down this programme.  In relation to public conveniences, no decision has been made about what we are going to do, there is some work going on at the moment to see if we can upgrade and actually charge, particularly in places like Camber where there are lots of tourists.  Unfortunately, I am not able to answer this question at the moment, it is not this administration’s intention to close toilets, where the public do not want toilets closed.  We do have to find a better way of paying for it because it is quite a drain between £400,000 and £500,000 per year on the Council’s finances.  Clearly since we do not have any Government help anymore, no Government grant, no settlement, we have got to manage to get our books balanced.  It is a difficult subject, but it is something we are determined to solve over the next year or so.