Agenda item

Report of the Managing Director of Bridge House Estates and Chief Charities Officer.

Members received a report of the Managing Director of Bridge House Estates and Chief Charities Officer relative to the Benefits in Kind (BIK) annual report which detailed the annual Benefits in Kind data which had been collected and the amount of time that officers had reported spending on volunteering or the provision of advice and guidance to external bodies/charities during the period between April 2020 and March 2021.

Jack Joslin (Head of the Central Grants Unit) referred to a summary of the data collected from departments across the City Corporation between April 2020 and March 2021 (Appendix 1) and advised that there had been a significant decrease in BIK over the past year as a result of the impact of the pandemic on how the City Corporation has operated and what BIK’s could be offered.  As an example, Members were advised that the substantial percentage reduction in BIK’s for the Remembrancer’s department was as a result of event space not being available. It was hoped that the position would change as soon as the Covid-restrictions eased. 

With regard to the annual requirement, of every City Corporation department, to provide details of BIK’s to the Chamberlain’s Department, it was noted that some departments had not submitted any data for the past year and this therefore presented a number of issues in terms of effective monitoring of BIK’s across the organisation. Noting the corporate requirement to provide the Chamberlain’s Department with this data on an annual basis, Members stressed that departments could not simply choose to ignore the requirement and the matter should be flagged to the Resource Allocation Sub (Policy and Resources) Committee.

RESOLVED, that –

(i)            the summary and analysis of Benefits in Kind relating to April 2020 and March 2021 be noted; and

(ii)           the new reporting approach to be implemented across departments for 2021/22 be noted.