Issue - meetings

The Interim Director of Finance and Resources presented the Financial Outturn 2022/23 report, detailing the provisional revenue and capital outturn for that financial year, for Members’ consideration.  Whilst the Council had been on a finance recovery programme since April 2022, Members were informed that it was important to note that the authority had not yet closed the 2020/21 and 2021/22 accounts and these could impact upon the final 2022/23 position.

From a revenue perspective, the Council had a £10.520 million full year revenue budget which was approved by Council in February 2022.  The 2022/23 budget had included a £595,000 cross-cutting efficiency target, which was allocated to services based upon forecast underspends at Quarter 1 predominantly linked to vacancies.

The Finance Team had undertaken a detailed review of the 2022/23 accounts since the end of March 2023, and there were a number of assumptions and manual adjustments that had been made to arrive at the provisional outturn position detailed in the report. They included:

·             Anticipated accruals and prepayments,

·             Recharges to/from the HRA,

·             Grants were applied to known expenditure and remaining balances were carried forward,

·             Reserves were applied to expenditure,

·             Shared service recharges between Redditch Borough Council and Bromsgrove District Council were manually reflected, and

·             Transfers between the Collection Fund and the General Fund.

There was still work to be done to clear the backlog of entries in suspense and any miscoding.  Therefore, the provisional position detailed in the report was subject to change and a further update would be provided in due course.

Overall, it was anticipated that the provisional revenue overspend position would be a £685,000 overspend against the £10.520 million budget. This was a £65,000 reduction over the forecast at Quarter 3 which was a £750,000 overspend position.

The 2022/23 pay award - £1,925 pay award across all pay scales – had created a variance against the budget for a number of service areas. In addition to this, income pending reallocation had resulted in unfavourable variances for Community Transport, Shopmobility and Bereavement Services.  Overspends were also anticipated within Environmental Services due to a reallocation of stores stock pending in the Depot, increased fuel and fleet maintenance costs in Waste Management and the Place Teams as well as insurance claims in Tree Management.

From a Treasury Management perspective, the Council had no short-term borrowing at the 31^st March 2023 and long-term borrowing had not changed from the £103.9 million taken out some time ago. The Council also held £10.6 million in short-term investments.

An updated capital programme totalling £5.431 million was approved in the budget for 2022/23 in March 2023. Of this, £2 million was funded from Council resources whilst £3.4 million was externally funded. The provisional capital outturn expenditure was expected to be £2.137 million against the overall £5.431 million budget. The £3.292 million budget underspend would be rolled forward from 2022/23 to the 2023/24 financial year.

Information had been provided regarding anticipated reserves over the medium term to the 31^st March 2026. At the 31^{st  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30}