Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 27 July 2020 be confirmed.

No declarations of interest were received.

Purpose of Report

To report on the adverse long-term sustainability of the current business model for Lincoln Drill Hall, especially considering the impact of Covid 19 on that model, and then reflect on the potential for providing any continued grant funding from the City Council moving forward.

Decision

1.    That the petition submitted entitled ‘Keep Funding Lincoln Drill Hall’ be received by Executive.

2.    That grant funding to Lincoln Arts Trust Ltd (LATL) be continued for another six months to the end of the Service Level Agreement period.

3.    That the Service Level Agreement with Lincoln Arts Trust Ltd would not be renewed once it expired on 31 March 2021.

4.    That further discussions be held with the trustees of LATL to assist as much as possible with the future well-being of existing staff.

Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

There appeared a limited number of options open now to LATL and to the City Council in particular. The majority of these options came with a large investment requirement.

These were:

Option1: Tocontinue the current level of grant funding into a new SLA. It should be noted however, that the Drill Hall operating model was increasingly unsustainable prior to Covid 19 and would be even less viable moving forward. On this basis Option 1 would still lead LATL to experience severe financial difficulty in a very short period of time and hence could be considered not to be prudent use of public money over the term of a new SLA.

Option 2: To undertake negotiations with another provider in the city regarding a new model of merged delivery and underwrite the entire transition cost. As above, the additional cost to the City Council could be in excess of £250,000. Such costs were beyond the capacity of the council to fund and conversations either directly with other providers or through LATL would indicate very little appetite locally to enter serious negotiations to take on the Drill Hall as an ongoing concern.

Reason for Decision

The Leader of the City Council made an opening statement as follows:

·         No member of this council would have ever imagined it would find itself in its current financial situation due to the impact of Covid 19, which was out of its control.

·         He praised the work of Drill Hall staff and expressed pride and passion towards Lincoln Drill Hall. He had always had a great deal of affection for the Drill Hall since Council involvement with the venue since 2003.

·         It was definitely not the situation that the Council ceased to believe in the importance of arts in the city. City Council support to arts and culture in the city had always been good.

·         He offered his support to the hard working staff at the Drill Hall and offered his help in their future well-being as much as he could.

The Council’s petition scheme set out that petitions in excess of 900 signatures were entitled to a debate at a meeting of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.

Purpose of Report

To provide the Executive with a status report of the revised Strategic Risk Register as at the end of the first quarter 2020/21.

Decision

That the Council’s strategic risks as at the end of the first quarter 2020/21 be noted by Executive.

Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

None.

Reason for Decision

An interim report on the status of the strategic risks that the Council faces was presented to the Executive in July 2020. At that time, and as a result of the COVID pandemic, rather than provide the full strategic risk register the report only set out the current thirteen strategic risks.

Since reporting in July 2020 officers had now undertaken a full assessment of those risks in terms of the level of assessed risk (likelihood and impact), target risk scores, control measures in place and mitigating actions required in order to; avoid, seek, modify, transfer or retain the risks.

The outcome of this work had resulted in a refreshed Strategic Risk Register for 2020/21, which reflected the significant change in circumstances in which the Council was now operating and the different challenges and opportunities it faced. This refreshed register, contained in Part B of the agenda, would be performance monitored on a quarterly basis, reported to both the Performance Scrutiny Committee and the Executive.

The Strategic Risk Register currently contained thirteen risk, as follows:

1.    Failure to engage & influence effectively the Council’s strategic partners, council staff and all stakeholders to deliver against e.g. Council’s Vision 2025

2.    Failure to deliver a sustainable Medium Term Financial Strategy (that supports delivery of Vision 2025).

3.    Failure to deliver the Towards Financial Sustainability Programme whilst ensuring the resilience of the Council.

4.    Failure to ensure compliance with statutory duties/functions and appropriate governance arrangements are in place.

5.    Failure to protect the local authority's Vision 2025 due to changing structures and relationships in local government and impact on size, scale and scope of the Council.

6.    Unable to meet the emerging changes required in the Council’s culture, behaviour and skills to support the delivery of the council’s Vision 2020/2025 and the transformational journey to one Council approach.

7.    Insufficient levels of resilience and capacity exist in order to deliver key strategic projects & services within the Council.

8.    Decline in the economic prosperity within the City Centre.

9.    Failure to mitigate against the implications for the Council following the outcome of Brexit.

10.   Failure to deliver key strategic projects.

11.   Failure of the Council’s key contractors and partners to remain sustainable and continue to deliver value for money

12.   Failure to work in partnership to sustain support to vulnerable residents post COVID19.

13.   Failure to put in place safe working practices and social distancing measures to protect officers and service users.

The assessed level of each of these thirteen risks was as follows:

RESOLVED that the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business because it was likely that if members of the public were present there would be a disclosure to them of ‘exempt information’ as defined by Section 100I and Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972.

The minute associated with this item was set out in item 14 above.

Decision

That the recommendation contained within the report be approved, as per the associated minute detailed above.

The minute associated with this item was set out in item 15 above.

Decision

That the recommendation contained within the report be approved.