Agenda item

(Report of the Chief Financial Officer – To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Resources): To set out the provisional revenue and capital outturn for 2008/09 and to consider carry forward requests.

We noted that the report set out the provisional revenue and capital outturn for 2008/09 and carry forward requests.

We referred to the high turn over of staff figure shown as 12.6%, and the currency use of temporary/agency staff shown as 10% and expressed our concerns at the high level of each figure. Given that monies were taken from redundancy budget was used, we asked whether those persons made redundant could not have been retrained into vacant positions. In response our cabinet Member for Resources advised that wherever possible the Council maximised its reallocation/redeployment process.  Cabinet Members would be circulated with appropriate details. The redundancies had mainly occurred in the areas of Children and Young People’s service and the Transport Service.

We received responses to a number of points from Councillor Wilson in terms of specific aspects within the report including clarification on :

·        in respect of the provisional capital outturn of a £14.22m underspend and carry forward proposals of £10.409m and saving of £3.8 million, and schemes in the decent homes projects from the previous year not appearing in the current year -  the reason for the underspend and subsequent carry forward was due to some schemes being delivered at a lower cost, which was a subsequent saving for the Council, and that in terms of specific government grant expenditure there was no requirement for it to be requested to be carried forward as it was grant funded

·        The details of the capital works were provided

·        The rephrasing to 2009/10 of the underspend in respect of the Finsbury park Athletic Track of £50k  and confirmation that the scheme was proceeding in 2009/10

·        Clarification of the BSF School Construction Project and confirmation that the Heartlands School would not be affected by any delays and was still on target for opening in September 2010

·        Clarification of the likely losses of interest in terms of Icelandic Banks  and confirmation that the figure was in the region of £800K and written confirmation of the exact figure would be given.

RESOLVED:

1.      That the provisional general fund outturn of a £0.765 million under spend for 2008/09 be noted.

2.    That the reasons for variations and to approve the planned transfers to reserves detailed in Appendix A to the interleaved report be noted.

3.    That the provisional housing revenue account (HRA) outturn be noted and approval granted to the treatment of the Homes for Haringey surplus set out at paragraph 13.14 of the interleaved report.

4.    That approval be granted to the revenue carry forward proposals amounting to £0.735 million as detailed in Appendix C to the interleaved report.

5.    That the provisional capital outturn of a £14.22 million under spend and the reasons for variation set out in Appendix B and to approve the capital carry forward proposals of £10.409 million set out in Appendix D to the interleaved report be noted.

6.    That the outturn of a £0.5 million overspend for schools, the fact that this would decrease schools’ balances to £6.6 million at the end of 2008/09 and the carry forward of the deficit be noted.

7.    That approval be granted to £0.75 million of the Direct Schools Grant under spend referred to in paragraph 14.5 of the interleaved report being earmarked to help support child safeguarding resource issues and that a report be submitted to the Schools Forum seeking their support to this proposal.

8.    That approval be granted to the bid to fund capital works at Alexandra Palace of £0.3m, as set in paragraph 13.3 of the interleaved report from the capital under spend.

9.    That approval be granted to the delegation to the Chief Financial Officer of authority to prepare the Council’s financial accounts such that the financial position of the Council is optimised.

10. That it be noted that the Council’s financial statements for 2008/09 were to be approved by General Purposes Committee prior to external audit.

11. That the treasury management outturn set out in section 16 of the interleaved report be noted.