157 2019/20 Provisional Financial Outturn PDF 716 KB
[Report of the Director of Finance. To be
introduced by the Cabinet Member for Finance and Strategic
Regeneration]
This report sets out the revenue and capital
outturn for 2018/19 together with proposed transfers to/from
reserves and revenue and capital carry forward requests.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
The
Cabinet Member for Finance and Strategic Regeneration introduced
the report, which set out the Council’s provisional budget
outturn for the year ended 31 March 2019. The report further
contained the draft revenue outturn for the General Fund (GF), the
Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA) the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG)
and Capital Programme compared to budget. Cabinet considered the
explanations of significant under/overspends and proposed movements
in reserves.
The Cabinet Member was pleased
to report a balanced position with the overspend against service
budgets of £9.1m offset by corporate interventions as
previously forecast in the quarter 3 budget report in March. Whilst
the 2019/20 budget and 2019/20-2023/24 MTFS sought to rebalance
some of the budget pressures in Children’s and Adults, and
unachievable savings had been written out, the overall budget gap
remaining for 2020/21 and beyond was a challenging one. There were
presentation sessions open to all Members on context of the budget
before the detailed review began, in the autumn, in preparation for
the budget.
In response to questions from
Cllr Brabazon and Cllr Cawley-
Harrison, the following information was noted:
- The capital
budget variances of £34m relating to developer contribution
was set out at the foot of table 5, paragraph 8.13 of the attached
report. This contained the information on the variation between the
budgeted use for funding and the actual use of the funds. Within
that, there was an explanation about developer contributions being
under budget. Essentially, this information related to delivery of
certain schemes and provided a list of explanations regarding
delays and other changes to the authority’s intended
plans.
- In response
to a query regarding the PFI lifecycle reserve, it was normal
practice for any organisation, that have been subject to PFI, to
receive an ongoing stream of revenue grants from government that
actually in early years exceeds PFI payments .The excess received
was placed into a reserve to meet the contractor payments once the
grant funding stops.
- With regards
to decommissioning the community infrastructure reserve, it was
good practice to complete an annual review of reserve holdings to
ascertain if still required and to understand the purpose for which
it has been put aside is still applicable. It was noted that this
particular reserve allocation had no back-story that could be
located. Rather than leave this reserve standing unused, it was
proposed to re -purpose this fund to part finance the change agenda
of the authority, allowing increased funding for transformation ICT
spend and to manage the delivery risk associated with the DSG
overspend.
- Responding
to the question on Local Implementation Plan funding from TFL, it
was noted that the authority was facing significant financial
challenges and the Council understood from previous experience,
tackling this requires investment in change to enable required
transformation to meet future financial conditions. This reserve
had been run down and was previously at a higher level. The change
in funding of the LIP highways funded works presented an
opportunity to create some more financial capacity to go into
...
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