Agenda item

The Leader advised that Councillor Martin Coffin would shortly present the Cabinet’s recommendations on the budget to Council and, while not wishing to pre-empt consideration of the budget proposals, he drew attention to the Council’s potential business rates income with particular reference to business rates retention.  He reminded Members that, last November, the Government had invited bids for the piloting of 100% business growth retention in the financial year 2018/19, particularly encouraging two tier authorities to work together.  He was delighted to advise that the bid put forward by the Kent Council Leaders and Medway Council, in totality a financial bid of circa £25 million, was one of ten to be approved. He advised that the bid had the potential, linked to growth, of achieving £560K as a windfall sum for the Borough Council to assist with financial stability.  Additionally, he reported that the Kent and Medway bid had a second allocation of funding for each of the three cluster areas and he advised that for the West Kent cluster (Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks and Tonbridge and Malling) there was a potential further £1.055 million to support future housing and commercial growth in the region. He indicated that he would be meeting the Leaders of Kent County Council, and the neighbouring west Kent districts to discuss how best to invest that second pot of funding. 

The Leader said that Members would be aware that this Authority was one of the first fifteen councils to no longer receive revenue support grant and that, as part of the move towards full business rate retention (part of a four year settlement), the Treasury was clawing back £1 million from the current business rate income.  The Government had announced its intention to consult on these funding arrangements and the Leader assured Members that a robust response would be made to this consultation. The Leader reminded Members that the closure of Aylesford Newsprint (formerly the Council’s largest business ratepayer) had taken the Council below the baseline for business rate retention purposes and, consequently, the Council’s share of the safety net under the risk/reward model, had been paid from its own resources.  On a positive note, the Leader stated that the Director of Finance and Transformation had advised that current projections suggested that the Council was closer to the baseline set and could find itself above baseline at the year-end 2017/18. 

The Leader stated that supporting and working closely with business leaders was a key priority and advised that, since the last meeting of Council, he had arranged two business engagement meetings for small businesses from across the Borough.  He thanked Councillor Vivian Branson for her support at both meetings and Jeremy Whittaker, the Economic Regeneration Officer.  The last meeting provided an opportunity to explain the ever-increasing complexities of the Business Rate system. 

The Leader stated that another key priority was maintaining the cleanliness of the Borough.  He advised that the Borough Council was responsible for sweeping over 1,750 roads totalling a length of more than 800 kilometres.  He reminded Members of the Council’s zero tolerance approach and advised that in the year 2017/18 over 160 Fixed Penalty Notices had been issued for litter and fly tipping offences.

The Leader also reported that the Council had a strong record on promotion, education and partnership.  He advised that the first weekend in March would see the launch of the Great British Spring Clean.  He was pleased to announce that with 35 community clean up events planned for this year, Tonbridge and Malling had more events than any other district in Kent.  He expressed his gratitude to the community groups and parishes who took pride in their Borough. 

Finally, the Leader referred to the reports in the Daily Mail newspaper about cyber security and took the opportunity to ‘set the record straight’.  He stated that the Borough Council took the threat of cyber security extremely seriously and advised that its officers monitored and recorded accurately all attempts to attack its IT systems.  The data showed that there had been 62 attempted attacks, 60 of which were unsuccessful, with two successful.  Neither of these two successful attacks had caused a shut down of systems or any data loss.  The other 60 incidents were attempts which were detected and successfully defended against.  The Leader stated that the Council had a significant number of defences and monitoring systems in place which detected such threats.  He invited Members to join him in thanking the IT team for the professional approach adopted.