Agenda item

Consider report by Director Resilient Communities.  (Copy attached.)

         With reference to paragraph 9 of the Minute of 15 December 2022, there had been circulated copies of a report by the Director Resilient Communities setting out a proposal to provide financial support of £550,000 within the current 2022/23 financial year to assist Live Borders with the significant financial pressures resulting from energy inflation, cost of living crisis and the slower return to pre-pandemic levels of visitor attendance and participation.  It also proposed a joint Council/Live Borders Strategic Review to strengthen and improve partnership arrangements and ensure that, through engagement with communities and service users, services were re-established on a sustainable footing and aligned with the needs of customers and communities.  The report detailed the challenging financial pressures that faced Live Borders as a result of the recent extraordinary rise in energy costs, reduced footfall and associated income reductions as a result of the cost of living crisis and the protracted recovery from the pandemic.  In addition to these pressures other challenges included putting measures and products in place to deal with the rapid changes to the way services were consumed and accessed by customers and the drive for Net Zero by 2045. Short term-financial support of £550K was proposed within the current financial year (2022/23) to enable Live Borders to address these challenges.  Recognising that these pressures continued into the medium and long term, the report also proposed that the Council and Live Borders undertake a wide-reaching review of its current partnership, funding and service delivery arrangements to ensure the Trust was sustainable in the long term and meeting the needs of communities and service users.  Given these ongoing challenges, coupled with the significant expansion of the scope and scale of services provided by Live Borders in recent years the report recognised the need to renew and update the governance arrangements set out in the 2016 Service Provision Agreement (SPA).  The proposed review would build on the joint SBC/Live Borders Service Redesign proposals agreed by Council in June 2021.  The aim was to complete the review by end of October this year with the outcome informing the 2024/25 service and budget planning process. To enable this, it was proposed that external consultants with suitable experience and expertise were engaged to support the delivery and timely completion of the review.  It was also proposed that a Joint Steering Group, based on the existing SBC/Live Borders Member/Trustee Group – and with additional representatives from both organisations - would oversee the delivery of the review and its outcomes.  The group would be supported by a working group comprising officials from both organisations enabling the appropriate professional input as the review progressed.  Members supported the approach of focussing on the future and the need for service redesign.

         DECISION

         AGREED:-

(a)        to provide financial support to Live Borders within the current financial year (2022/23) of £550,000 from the Recovery Fund to assist with the significant financial pressures faced by the Trust as a result of energy inflation, the cost of living crisis and ongoing the recovery from the Pandemic;

(b)       to a joint Council/Live Borders strategic review, as set out in the report, with the aim of strengthening and improving partnership and service delivery arrangements and ensuring that the services delivered by Live Borders, on behalf of SBC under the terms of the SPA, were sustainable in the long term and met the current and future needs of Borders residents;

(c)        to deploy funding of up to £50,000 from the Recovery Fund to enable the external facilitation of the review.  This would allow appropriate additional external expertise and capacity to be sourced to assist with the completion of the review by the end of October 2023, thereby ensuring that the findings were able to inform the 2024/25 planning process;

          (d)     to note the continuing financial pressures facing Live Borders in 2023/24 might require further financial assistance to be provided to ensure the financial stability of the Trust; and

          (e)     that a Joint Steering Group based on the existing SBC/Live Borders Member/Trustees Group, as well as the Convener and a representative from the SNP Group, oversee the delivery of the Strategic Review as detailed in the report and that Councillor Thornton-Nicol would provide the name of the additional SNP representative to the Clerk to the Council after the meeting.

         MEMBERS

         Councillors PatonDay, Richards, Thornton-Nicol and Weatherston returned to the meeting.