Councillor left waiting seven months for budget information

Speaking at a scrutiny committee meeting on Monday (September 3),  Conservative Robert Smart told members he has yet to receive detailed information about the council’s corporate landlord revenue despite first requesting a report in February.

Cllr Smart, who represents the Meads ward, said he had received an ‘uninformative’ response to his initial request, so repeated the call at the next scrutiny committee meeting in June.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Smart said: “There is a very serious point here. At the beginning of February the scrutiny committee, which is supposed to scrutinise, is given a preview of the budget.

“Rather than going through it line-by-line, we limit ourselves to a small number of questions and at the top of my list was the £2.7m sitting there as corporate landlord.  

“I find it really quite unsatisfactory that seven months later I have not had the answers I have requested.”

Cllr Smart added he would ideally like to see a property-by-property breakdown of the council’s rental portfolio income and raised concerns about a ‘lack of detail’ in what he considered to be a ‘high risk area’.