Issue - meetings

Finance Monitoring Quarter 1 2017/18

Meeting: 12/09/2017 - Executive (Item 46)

46 Finance Monitoring Quarter 1 2017/18 pdf icon PDF 201 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Members received a report which detailed the Council’s final financial position for the General Fund Revenue, Capital and Housing Revenue Account (‘HRA’) for the period April to June 2017 (Quarter 1 2017/18).

 

Officers explained that on the back of discussions with the Executive and the Budget Scrutiny Working Group, a summary position only, with general supporting financial commentary, was being given on the Revenue Budget, with Officers due to discuss the more detailed elements with their respective Portfolio Holders.  It was noted that there was an £87k underspend at the end of the first quarter, which Officers detailed the key aspects of.

 

Officers went on to highlight the main elements of the Capital Budget Summary, notably the ‘Help me find somewhere to live in my locality’ underspend, together with the HRA underspends for Repairs and Maintenance and Supervision and Management.  Officers were working on producing better profiles of spend based on realistic spend throughout the year, and stated that they would also provide a breakdown of spend against the £19m Financial Reserves in the Quarter 2 report.

 

In relation to the Efficiency Plan, Officers advised that a number of savings had been delivered, further details of which would be included in the Quarter 2 report.  Members queried why only £85k of the proposed £1.572m savings set out in the Efficiency Plan for 2017/18 had been identified.  Officers advised that it had not been possible to analyse all of the information in Quarter 1 and that full details would therefore be set out in the Quarter 2 report.  The issue of vacancies was raised and Officers undertook to include a schedule of vacant posts which had been deleted in the Quarter 2 report.

 

Issues highlighted by Grant Thornton, the Council’s external auditors, as part of their Audit Findings Report for 2016/17, were raised.  Officers stated that they accepted that there were issues in relation to the identification and monitoring of savings, and advised that they would be meeting with Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council in October to look at their processes.  Equally, it was noted from the Statement of Accounts briefing which had taken place the previous evening that progress had been made by the Council in both this and other areas, and that the Council was moving in the right direction.

 

RECOMMENDED that

 

1)          the 2017/18 Capital Programme be increased by £209k to include the Section 106 projects detailed in Appendix 3 to the report; and

 

RESOLVED that

 

2)          the current financial position for the quarter April to June 2017, as detailed in the report, be noted.