Issue - meetings

To scrutinise the provisional outturn for 2025/26 for the General Fund (GF), Housing Revenue Account (HRA), Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and the Capital Programme compared to the original budget agreed by Council in March 2025. The report provided for this item was originally submitted to the meeting of the Cabinet on 14th July 2026.

Attendees for this item were:

·       Cllr Johann Beckford, Cabinet Member for Finance & Corporate Services

·       Taryn Eves, Corporate Director of Finance & Resources and S151

·       Josephine Lyseight, Director of Finance and Deputy S151 Officer

Cllr Johann Beckford introduced the report for this item noting that it reflected a difficult set of financial circumstances for the Council and challenging national circumstances following years of austerity. Specific points that he highlighted included that:

• The Council had required £40.6m of Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) in 2025/26, which was a significant increase on the £10m required the previous year.
• The Council had spent £792m on providing services in 2025/26, including 5,890 residents using adult social care services, 4,671 using children’s social care, and 2,725 in temporary accommodation.
• Spending on the largest services was connected to the broader picture in these areas, such as a housing market that fed the need for temporary accommodation. The new administration would be open about the financial responsibilities that the Council had to address but would also be an outward looking and campaigning Council on the changes required at a national policy level.

Taryn Eves then added the following points:

• The £40.6m EFS requirement in 2025/26 was higher than the £37m figure that had been anticipated at the beginning of the year. However, it was lower than the £54m figure that was being reported at Quarter 3.
• There had been a £15.5m overspend on services. There was a range of overspends and underspends as shown in Table 1 in the report.
• There had been an underspend in adult social care which was largely due to holding down inflation levels in services that the Council commissioned.
• An ongoing pressure was temporary accommodation where there had been an overspend of £7m, although this represented a £3.4m improvement on Quarter 3. There had been some improvements due to the impact of initiatives that had been put in place but there were still high numbers in nightly paid accommodation.
• Environment & Resident Experience (E&RE) had a £5.8m overspend which was largely from the parking and highway service and slippage in the delivery of staffing savings.
• Finance, Procurement & Audit had a £4.9m overspend which was largely driven by the corporate property portfolio.
• The second part of Table 1 showed £6m of unallocated Corporate Contingency which contributed to the overall bottom line. It also showed a £2.9m underspend on the Treasury Management Charges resulted from lower borrowing due to a 40% slippage in the capital programme. It also reflected slightly higher interest rates on the balances that were invested during the year.
• The Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) reported a £3.2m overspend which was entirely from the high-needs block. This had been an ongoing trend over the past couple of years which was not unique to Haringey.
• There was a £4.3m deficit on the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) which had required a drawdown of funds from the HRA reserves which had been reduced to around £15m. Relevant factors included a high level of voids and assumptions about the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21