Issue - meetings

The Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Resources presented the Finance Monitoring Quarter 3 2017/18 report and in doing so highlighted the following points for Members’ consideration:

·                The Council was projecting a variance of £150,000 by the end of the year in 2017/18.

·                When corporate financing and capital costs were taken into account a shortfall of £396,000 was anticipated for the end of 2017/18.

·                One cause of the shortfall was that the Council had not received the number of planning applications that had been anticipated, representing a shortfall of approximately £100,000.

·                The additional costs associated with the marquee that had been provided by Bereavement Services was also contributing approximately £90,000 to this shortfall.

·                A void property had been listed as a cost to the Council, though officers undertook to check whether this should have referred to the costs arising from multiple void properties.

·                A shortfall in corporate savings had been recorded for Enabling Services.

·                Savings had been achieved through paying for the Council’s pension deficit costs up front.

·                Significant figures had been recorded in the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) for Repairs and Maintenance and Supervision and Management costs.  This had arisen partly due to the need for the Council to employ temporary additional management staff whilst a number of issues in the Housing Department were addressed.

·                The format of financial monitoring reports would be changing in 2018/19.

After the report had been presented Members discussed a number of matters in detail:

·                The action that would be taken by officers to reduce the shortfall by the end of the financial year.  Officers advised that Heads of Service had been working hard in an attempt to reduce the shortfall and any expenditure not considered necessary over the next couple of weeks would not be approved.

·                The potential to balance the budget by the end of the financial year by using funding from balances.  Officers confirmed that the Council had sufficient balances to accommodate this arrangement.

·                The action being taken to ensure that void properties were rented out, thereby increasing rental income for the Council.

·                The amount that had been spent to date on the vehicle purchasing and Locality capital projects schemes.  Officers undertook to obtain further detail in relation to this matter together with clarification about the associated borrowing costs for the Council.

·                The level of expenditure achieved to date in respect of the Disabled Facilities Grant and the potential to use some of this funding to promote the scheme to eligible residents.  Officers agreed to check this outside the meeting, though it was noted that this was unlikely to be possible as these were capital funds and advertising costs usually came from revenue budgets.

RESOLVED that

Executive Committee note the current financial positions for the quarter April – December 2017 as detailed in the report.

RECOMMENDED that      

the 2017/18 Capital Programme be increased by £73k on the Disabled facilities grant project due to additional funds being received by DCLG.