Meeting Details

RESOLVED that: the minutes of the meeting held on 9 September 2025 be approved as a correct record. 

The Committee considered a report which asked that it review, consider and comment on the Annual Governance Statement (AGS) of Colchester Borough Homes (CBH).

Angelique Ryan, Director of Resources CBH, attended the meeting to present the report and assist the Committee with its enquiries. The Committee was advised that the annual governance report which was before it differed from the quarterly performance reports which it considered as it focussed on providing governance assurance.

The Committee heard that David Hart, Chair of Finance and Audit Committee CBH, who was present at the meeting, was an executive director at a housing association and benefited both the Finance and Audit Committee of CBH and the Board of CBH with a wealth of expertise.

The Committee was asked to note the financial statement which had been presented to it, and which had been signed off by the external auditors of CBH with a clean audit opinion. Full accounts were available at Companies House, and a link to these had been provided in the report. Also before the Committee was a summary of internal audit outcomes, together with the opinion of the head of internal audit, which was positive. Also included was a high level breakdown of CBH’s management fee and income and expenditure headlines, and this information related to CBH only and did not cover the wider Housing Revenue Account (HRA). The Committee was asked to consider and comment on the AGS, and accept the assurance which had been provided by CBH.

A Committee member was pleased to note the focus of the Board on CBH, and was comforted by the scrutiny that took place in relation to CBH’s financial position. He did, however, express some surprise that the accounts had not been formally presented to this Committee in its role as shareholder committee, and considered that there was a huge liability associated with CBH in terms of pensions, and it was not clear how this had been represented in the accounts. An additional concern was that the Council’s assets were not sitting in CBH, but rather were in the HRA, over which there appeared to be no significant governance. The HRA contained levels of debt which he considered were not remotely sustainable, and there was a need to know who was responsible for the HRA. Adding to these concerns was the Heart Of Greenstead project, for which CBH appeared to be partly, but not completely, responsible. Which Committee or Officers had overall responsibility for delivering this project? When considering CBH in isolation it had done a great job, but the Committee was only considering the managing agent and not the portfolio.

Philip Sullivan, Chief Executive CBH, attended the meeting and responded to the points which had been made. In terms of CBH’s accounts, these had been published on Companies House, and linked to in the report which was before the Committee, and questions in relation to the accounts were invited as it was always the aim of CBH to strive for total transparency. The HRA Business Plan had been approved by Cabinet, and had been through a process of scrutiny prior to this. It would be considered again by Cabinet, likely at its meeting scheduled for January 2026. The Chief Executive CBH worked closely with the Council’s S151 Officer on the HRA Business Plan, for which they took responsibility. In terms of the Heart of Greenstead project, although it was not appropriate to scrutinise this at the current meeting, which was focussed on the governance of CBH, the Chief Executive CBH assured the Committee that the project would be referred to the appropriate Committee or Cabinet at the appropriate time.

In response to further questioning from the Committee with regard to pension accounts, the Director of Resources CBH confirmed that a surplus was still showing, but this was a lower surplus that the preceding year. In terms of the pension liability, the Chair of Finance and Audit Committee CBH provided an update and explanation of pension fund asset valuing with a pension surplus being held as a nil value asset in the accounts as it was not considered to be an asset of the business.

In terms of benchmarking against other authorities, the Committee sought further information in respect of the actual management costs per dwelling. If capital costs were ignored, it appeared that direct costs related to the management of the Councils existing portfolio were approximately £10m. If this figure was divided by the number of dwellings, the cost per dwelling was just over £1,600, however, this appeared to only cover employee costs and when all costs were considered, the management cost figure per dwelling appeared to be approximately £3,000. When reporting on benchmarking for national figures, was it possible to provide a narrative on what was reported, and how the figure which had been presented in the report had been arrived at.

The Chief Executive CBH advised the Committee that in terms of cost, the figures which had been provided were high level which would be broken down between management and maintenance costs. The last time that these costs had been reviewed was as part of the HRA Business Plan review, when Savills had reviewed the overall management costs of the City Council (some of which sat within CBH). They had then considered the accounts for all stock owning local authorities and compared these on a like-for-like basis. Benchmarking which took place through organisations such as Housemark would be broken down into further detail.

A Committee member accepted that maintenance costs across different local authorities housing stock would vary, but considered that overall management costs were likely to be more uniform across different authorities. It appeared from the figures presented to the Committee that the management costs were approximately £10m, how was this figure arrived at? The Committee was advised by the Chief Executive CBH that all relevant information had been provided to Savills at the time of their review of the HRA. He was happy to ask that Savills considered this area again when the next update was presented to Cabinet in January 2026.

A member of the Committee had been seeking clarification on the composition of management costs for a number of years, and was unhappy with the way in which Savills had reported on this issue. He considered that the management costs which had been reported were significantly higher than other local authorities, and the HRA was bearing a costs of approximately £2,300 per dwelling when compared to a similar authorities cost of approximately £1,300 per dwelling. There was a need to benchmark accurately, and if it was found that the Council was spending more, the reasons for this should be discovered and addressed. The Chief Executive CBH reiterated that as part of the HRA review, Savills had been asked to examine the audited accounts for every stock owning authority in the country, and had confirmed that the Council’s management costs were below the national average. It was not possible for a more comprehensive review to have been carried out.

A Committee member did not believe that questions which he had asked in relation to benchmarking had been satisfactorily answered, and considered that that the Council may be spending approximately £5m per year which it did not have to. It was only necessary to compare the Council’s spend to other social housing providers in the East of England, but was it possible to ask Savills to provide assurance that the Council was scrutinising itself properly. The Chief Executive CBH reminded the Committee that the HRA Business Plan was to be referred to Cabinet in January 2026, and he would ask this this issue was revisited as part of this process by benchmarking within the East of England area.

In terms of the assurance which had been provided by internal audit, the Committee considered that this had been in line with previous years, and sought additional information concerning the single urgent item which had been raised. The Director of Resources CBH confirmed that the procurement audit had been given a limited assurance which related to the records of decisions not being completed for smaller quotations. A number of recommendations had been made, and the Committee was assured that CBH’s Finance and Audit Committee had scrutinised the audit outcome in some detail and a procurement project including an action plan, led by the Head of Finance CBH, had been instigated.

RESOLVED that:

- The Committee had considered and commented on the Governance Assurance Statement of Colchester Borough Homes.

- The Committee accepted the assurance which had been provided by Colchester Borough Homes regarding its governance arrangements throughout 2024/25.

The Committee considered a report which asked that it review the Amphora Growth and Finance Update 2025/26 and make recommendations to Cabinet to approve Amphora’s continued financial management and growth plans.

Councillor Martyn Warnes, Chair of the Board of Colchester Commercial (Holdings) Limited (CCHL), which was the holding company for the Amphora group of companies, attended the meeting and addressed the Committee to introduce the report.

Simon Coward, Managing Director Amphora, attended the meeting and advised the Committee that it was Amphora’s intention to continue to build capacity, capability and resilience through building operational excellence and identifying and developing areas for growth. Key areas of growth were highlighted to the Committee, including those of Helpline and Amphora Events, which had both performed very strongly in a number of areas during the year.

Turning to Amphora Connect (including Colchester Fibre), the Committee heard that its focus had been to utilise government funding to deliver full fibre broadband for all. There had been three main areas of growth; technology, commercial partnership and smart investment.

A Committee member was pleased to note the successes of Helpline and the Events business, considering that all reports had been positive and that it appeared that the businesses would be well placed to lead in their sectors going into local government reorganisation (LGR). He did, however, have concerns in respect of the fibre business. Although it was possible to obtain grants to support connecting Mersea and Wivenhoe, he considered that there was already plenty of commercial broadband provision on Mersea and wondered why so much effort was being spent replicating what the private sector was already doing when consideration for new broadband may be better placed in more rural areas of the district. Good coverage was already available in Colchester, was there a need for additional spending on infrastructure to take place? Would the better option be to sell the existing fibre network to Amphora’s competitors, providing scale economies for everyone’s benefit? It seemed as though Amphora consisted of 3 distinct companies with little opportunity to promote operational excellence between their different activities.

The Managing Director Amphora agreed that there were 3 distinct businesses, with the possibility of the addition of a fourth grounds maintenance business subject to the approval of Cabinet. Achieving overall operational efficiency was evidenced by the standardising of operations to achieve targets, and opportunities for cross-selling between the businesses were explored. Amphora Connect had been able to benefit from the installation of low cost fibre installation in the city centre, and was able to deliver fibre broadband to Wivenhoe for no investment through collaboration with Lightspeed. When considering the provision of fibre broadband to rural areas, the Committee heard that Mersea did not have full fibre capability in approximately 4,500 homes, and Openreach did not intend to install this in the near future, providing an opportunity for Amphora Connect to provide fibre broadband via the existing local area network for a small level of investment. In more rural areas, the cost of installing fibre broadband was not outweighed by the likely returns, and was therefore likely to be unviable.

In Response to questioning from the Committee around the extent of the existing fibre network on Mersea Island and other areas, Alistair Wilson, Senior Commercial Manager Amphora, advised that in West Mersea there was a degree of fibre provision, however, this was not widely available. Work to provide fibre broadband to Mersea using an existing local area network was underway, and it was hoped that being first to market in this area with an excellent package would provide a major commercial opportunity similar to that which had been delivered in Wivenhoe.

Noting the vast improvement in the speed and reliability of mobile data networks which were competitive with fibre networks for some uses, the Committee sought to understand from where competition in this area was likely to arise. The Senior Commercial Manager Amphora agreed that the quality of mobile data networks was improving significantly, however, it was important to be able to provide the right connectivity solution for the individual customer. Consumers understood the level of connectivity which they required and although undoubtedly mobile networks would fulfil some of this need, there was undoubtedly still a market for the greater bandwidth capacity offered by physical fibre broadband.

A Committee member was pleased to note the successful events which had been attributed to the Events Company during the year. What had been the wider economic benefit to the City of the huge number of visitors to the area which these events had brought in? The Senior Commercial Manager Amphora confirmed that an economic impact report had been commissioned to start to quantify the benefits and the wider impacts which the successful events did have. Approximately 53% of tickets which had been sold had been to people from outside the ‘CO’ postcode area, and although anecdotal evidence from local hotels and bars had been that they were full to capacity, an impact report would provide additional firm data.

The Committee considered a report which set out its work programme for the current municipal year.

The Democratic Services Officer asked the Committee to note that at the previous meeting of Full Council, it had been resolved that changes to the Council’s governance processes would be made, and that these changes would be reviewed by this Committee before implementation. It was therefore suggested that a suitable report be submitted to the Committee at its next scheduled meeting in November 2025. A Committee member noted the potential for the report to cover wides areas of governance, and consequently suggested that the Monitoring Officer arrange to meet with the Chair of the Committee and its Group Spokespersons during the drafting process of the report.

A Committee member had been promised answers to questions which he had raised in respect of the Council’s Houring Revenue Account (HRA). He had written to Savills in respect of this and believed that there was a fundamental error in the HRA, which was a huge issue. The Chair of the Committee would speak with the Council’s S151 Officer to ensure that this topic was addressed at a future meeting.

RESOLVED that: the contents of the work programme be noted.