By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Up to £2.4m will be needed to help Nottingham City Council meet dozens of urgent instructions set out by a Government-appointed improvement board.
The Labour-run authority remains under the watch of the improvement board following the collapse of Robin Hood Energy in 2020.
It has the power to both advise and direct the council towards financial and operational stability, and should the council fail to enact change quickly, the Government may step in with stricter intervention.
The council avoided commissioner intervention at the beginning of February this year in favour of stronger powers for the improvement board.
Chaired by Sir Tony Redmond, the board has since listed dozens of instructions which the council must now follow.
While instructions were first published at the beginning of March, it was revealed during an Executive Board meeting on March 21 the cost of meeting the targets would total up to £2.4m.
Cllr David Mellen (Lab), the leader of the council, said: “When it was decided at the time Nottingham City Council should not be subject to commissioners, for which we are grateful, the alternative route was that the improvement board would continue and use the statutory powers they were given in the Summer of last year.
“They subsequently imposed instructions on us which have dated times which we should be compliant with.
“These are significant challenges, most of them are not new to us – they are things that have been talked about. Some of them are straightforward, others certainly are not.
“The money is a significant amount of money, but we are assured within this paper it will help us to comply with things that have been given us, some of which need additional people on a short-term basis in order for us to meet tight deadlines which we face.”
One instruction said the authority must “determine the future of Nottingham Castle in line with the commercial strategy and without exposing the council to inappropriate risk”.
It was given a deadline of June 30, and the council has now realised and approved plans to begin to reopen the historic site from May.
The wider list of instructions for the council have been broken down into sections, from companies and governance to finance and workforce culture.
The finance element will require the most substantial investment, at more than £1m alone.
Some of the most pressing instructions include the “complete the financing of the £17m misappropriation of funds relating to the HRA (Housing Revenue Account)”, which must be achieved by March 31, and the approval of a variety of financial and recovery plans, which must be achieved by the same date.
Some deadlines extend as far as March 2024, including the finalising of strategic plans for the council’s own companies.
The improvements will be funded through the council’s financial resilience reserve and will lead to greater savings in the longer term.
Mel Barrett, the council’s chief executive, said the reflections from the improvement board and Government, on the council’s progress towards better financial stability and cultural change, were good, but pace and timing was an issue.
“Therefore in terms of these instructions they have placed on them very strict time limits on the council and therefore in order to be able to meet those time limits…additional resources are required to accelerate delivery and meet those time limits,” he said.
Andrew Rule (Con), the leader of the Nottingham Conservatives, argued while it was encouraging to see resources allocated for improvements in finance, he criticised the time it has taken the council to realise it needs to focus on certain problems.
He added: “It has taken some time to get to this point the issue with improving financial management to meet instruction deadlines and working across three years’ of accounts, has been a long-standing issue for the last two years.
“In a way it has been a bit disappointing it has taken directions for us to focus on this, which should have been a focus long before now.”
