Finance & Governance Cabinet Member – Minutes – 4 January 2019
2 (2) NATIONAL NON-DOMESTIC RATE DISCRETIONARY RELIEF APPLICATIONS – The Director: Governance and Partnerships submitted a report considering the level of National Non-Domestic (NNDR) discretionary relief to be awarded to eligible ratepayers in North Lincolnshire.
NNDR legislation made provision for granting relief to a range of non- domestic properties. That included, for example, small business relief, charitable relief and empty property relief. Some relief was mandated and must be granted; other relief was discretionary.
Under the current regime of part localisation of NNDR the council funded a proportion of both mandatory and discretionary reliefs. As the council was part of the Lincolnshire 100% Business Rates Retention Pilot the council would fund 99% of all reliefs in 2018/19.
The report considered new applications for relief as well as ratepayers already in receipt of rate relief. New and existing applicants continued to return forms fully completed.
The council also has a Hardship Relief scheme for cases of exceptional hardship.
Resolved – That the proposal to award the level of rate relief to each applicant, as set out in the appendix to the report, be approved.
3 (3) INFORMATION GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK UPDATE – The Director: Governance and Partnerships submitted a report seeking approval for a series of updates to the council’s Information Governance Framework.
Information was a key council asset and it was crucial that it was looked after with the same care as other important assets, such as finance, people and land/property.
The Information Governance Framework comprised a series of specific policy and procedural schedules relating to the management and security of information and personal data. They set out how the council would comply with legal and best practice requirements governing information management. These requirements included the General Data Protection Regulation / Data Protection Act 2018 and the Freedom of Information Act.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaced the Data Protection Act 1998 on 25 May 2018 and the Data Protection Act 2018 that included clarification on some of the GDPR also came into force on the same day. This was an additional mid-year update to the framework to include requirements of the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 that were awaiting national guidance when the previous update was approved. The proposed changes to individual policies were summarised at Appendix 1 to the report.
Resolved – That the proposed changes to the Information Governance Framework, as set out in the report and accompanying appendices, be approved.