The Leader and Portfolio Holder for Strategy, Financial Strategy, Budget and Business Plan presented a report from the Head of Finance, Governance and Assurance that provided an update on the Council’s proposals to manage its financial position for 2017/18 and beyond.

                        RESOLVED:

i)             That further ongoing savings of £9.263m, deliverable by 2017/18 and £9.985m (a further £0.722m) deliverable by 2018/19, as set out in Table 5 and described in Appendix 2, be agreed and recommended to Council.

ii)            That the revision of the Council’s Growth Model and the allocation of ongoing savings and efficiencies that has resulted in a core funding gap in 2017/18 and 2018/19 of £13.690m and £20.211m respectively, be noted.

iii)           That it be noted that further work is being progressed to deliver a Sustainable Business Model for the Council to close the Core Funding Gap and deliver a financially self-sufficient Council in the medium to long term.

iv)           That the work being undertaken to attempt to reduce or close the reported Core Funding Gap in the short term in 2017/18 and 2018/19 by the use of one-off initiatives (to replace delivery of some Red RAG Rated savings as reported to Cabinet on 27 January 2016) be noted. Cabinet note that to achieve a balanced budget without further Red Savings proposals being implemented would require the identification of almost £34m of one-off proposals over these two financial years which will not reduce the size of the core funding gap in future years (still requiring £28.7m of base budget savings by 2019/20).

v)            That the Efficiency Plan be approved and recommended to Council as described in Section 9 and detailed in Appendix 5 including the proposals around the use of the new flexibilities on the use of Capital Receipts.

vi)           That the latest Adults Growth projections be considered as set out in Section 5 and the creation of a £2.5m contingency Budget for 2016/17 only, be approved as identified in section 4.3.

vii)         That the initial projections produced to identify the Core Funding Gap in 2019/20, as set out in Table 5, be noted.