Agenda item

Lead Member – Councillor David Minnery - Portfolio Holder for Finance and Corporate Support

Report of Director of Finance, Governance and Assurance (Section 151 Officer) to follow.

Contact: James Walton, 01743 258915

RESOLVED:

i) that that the outturn for the revenue budget for 2019/20 is a controllable overspend of £1.692m be noted. This represents 0.3% of the original gross budget of £568.489m.

ii) that had £0.460m of the Council’s General Fund not been applied in response to the Storm Dennis emergency event, and had £0.387m Coronavirus funding not been applied to revenue at year end, the controllable outturn position would have been an overspend of £2.539m be noted.

iii) that the level of the General Fund balance after adjusting for the outturn overspend and insurance position stands at £13.510m, which is significantly below the recommended level be noted.

iv) that the outturn for the Housing Revenue Account for 2019/20 is an underspend of £4.106m and the level of the Housing Revenue Account reserve stands at £10.140m (2018/19 £9.813m) be noted.

v) the increase in the level of Earmarked Reserves and Provisions (excluding delegated school balances) of £1.931 in 2019/20 and the reasons for this be noted.

vi) that the level of school balances stand at £1.891m (2018/19 £4.178m) be noted.

vii) That the net budget variations of £9.710m to the 2019/20 capital programme, detailed in Appendix 5 / Table 11 and the re-profiled 2019/20 capital budget of £70.982m be approved.

viii)That the re-profiled capital budgets of £127.309m for 2020/21, including slippage of £11.773m from 2019/20, £89.835m for 2021/22 and £103.110m for 2022/23 as detailed in Appendix 5 / Table 15 be approved.

ix) that the outturn expenditure set out in Appendix 5 of £59.209m, representing 83% of the revised capital budget for 2019/20 be approved.

x) That retaining a balance of capital receipts set aside of £19.619m as at 31st March 2020 to generate a one-off Minimum Revenue Provision saving of £0.693m in 2020/21.2m be approved.

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Corporate Support presented the report of the Director of Finance, Governance and Assurance providing details of the revenue and capital outturn position for 2019/20. There had been an overspend of £1.692m which represented a variance of 0.3% of the gross budget. The Leader said he felt this was a reasonable amount considering the extremely challenging year.

In response to a question from the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group regarding the implications of not meeting planned savings and whether there was a likelihood of future recruitment and spending freezes, the Portfolio Holder stated that there were a number of reasons savings had not been met in 2019 – 2020, some of which had been due to floods and the pandemic but some others had been due to be delivered via income generation. There was confidence that the planned savings would be achieved and alternative means of delivering services were being considered.

The Leader said he was confident that one-off funding would be received from government in relation to the pandemic and that the local government funding review would address some of the underlying issues with revenue budgets. Any vacancy was always carefully considered and recruitment did not proceed unless absolutely necessary.