Nottingham City Council has approved a spend of up to £100,000 for external support to help review its companies. The review must be done as part of its ongoing improvement plan, which it must conduct to meet its legal duty to balance its books.
The Labour-run authority, which recently set out a new budget detailing a number of controversial cuts to services, owns eight major companies. These include Nottingham City Homes, Nottingham City Transport, the National Ice Centre, Thomas Bow City Asphalt, Nottingham Revenue and Benefits, EnviroEnergy, Nottingham Futures and Blueprint.
Reviews into these companies are being conducted as part of its Recovery and Improvement Plan, the name of which was recently changed due to it having the "unfortunate" initialism 'RIP'. The reviews must happen following the collapse of its failed venture Robin Hood Energy, which cost the taxpayer millions.
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Documents state the money will help "progress the council's recovery and improvement plan for companies." The city council says: "The services required are outside the council areas of core competence. The procurement of these services will be under the EM Law Share Framework and therefore demonstrates best value."
The council's road to recovery is monitored by an independently-chaired improvement and assurances board, which reports back to the Government. So far ministers have been generally pleased with progress and the costly consequence of commissioners has been, to date, avoided.
It is yet another cost to the authority, however, with many hundreds of thousands having already been paid to external consultants. City council leader and Dales ward councillor, David Mellen, has before sought to explain these significant costs.
He said: "The Government’s non-statutory review of the council places a requirement on the council to improve, with a focus on financial and governance arrangements. We are making good progress on this, but we need external expertise at this early stage of our transformation, with changes required at pace.
“We made a request to Government for capitalisation, allowing us to borrow up to £20m against capital assets, which has helped us to create a transformation reserve. Some of this reserve money is being used to appoint external experts and set up new business support and customer service arrangements to drive the transformation activity that’s been identified is needed at the council. This does not impact on our budgets for running day to day services."
He added: "We understand that these costs are high, when the council is having to make huge savings from its budget. However, they are a necessary short-term measure to help us move forward."
