Purpose

To recommend the Capital Programme 2025/26 to
Council.

Decision

 
1.         To thank
the scrutiny commissions for their comments on the draft capital
budget.
 
To recommend to Council the following:
 
a)         Approve
the release of the Capital Fund, a revenue reserve, to the Managed
Reserve strategy of £90m. (see para 4.4 of the report
submitted by the Director of Finance)
;
 
b)         Approve
the change in financing for the 2024/25 capital programme, to
include prudential borrowing (see para 4.5 of the
report);
 
c)         Approve
reductions to the 2024/25 capital programme as described at
paragraph 4.8;
 
d)         Approve
the capital programme, together with the necessary prudential
borrowing, for schemes described in this report and summarised at
Appendices 2 to 5;
 
e)         For
those schemes designated immediate starts, delegate authority to
the lead director to commit expenditure, subject to the normal
requirements of contract procedure rules, rules concerning land
acquisition and finance procedure rules;
 
f)         
Delegate authority to the City Mayor to determine a plan of
spending for each policy provision, that may be added in-year, and
to commit expenditure up to the maximum available;
 
g)         For the
purposes of finance procedure rules:
•          
Determine that service resources shall consist of service revenue
contributions; HRA revenue contributions; and government
grants/third party contributions ringfenced for specific
purposes.
 
•          
Designate the operational estate, the children’s capital
maintenance programme, the highways maintenance programme and the
transport improvement programme as programme areas, within which
the director can reallocate resources to meet operational
requirements.
 
h)        Delegate to
the City Mayor:
•          
Authority to increase any scheme in the programme, or add a new
scheme to the programme, subject to a maximum of £10m
corporate resources in each instance and to borrow whilst remaining
within the prudential limits for debt which are proposed in the
treasury management strategy (elsewhere on the Council  agenda);
 
•          
Authority to reduce or delete any capital scheme, subject to a
maximum reduction of £10m; and
 
•          
Authority to transfer any “policy provision” to the
“immediate starts” category.
 
i)         
Delegate to directors, in consultation with the relevant
deputy/assistant mayor, authority to incur expenditure up to a
maximum of £250k per scheme in respect of policy provisions,
that may be added in-year, on design and other professional fees
and preparatory studies, but not any other type of expenditure.
 
j)         
Approve the capital strategy at Appendix 6.