Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 This report presents the financial monitoring information for the Authority as a whole for the financial year 2009/10 to the end of November 2009. This report was originally an agenda item for the cancelled 13^th January 2010 Cabinet meeting.

2 RECOMMENDATION

The Cabinet agrees that:

2.1 Strategic Directors should continue to work towards managing within budget in the current year for their respective service areas, and to manage below budget where possible by not committing unnecessary expenditure, through tight budgetary control.

2.2 This year's revenue budget position as shown in Appendix 2 is noted.

2.3 The Highways Maintenance budget is increased by £0.5m, funded by a one-off drawdown from the Revenue Budget Contingency to enable immediate action to be taken to increase repairs necessary following the deterioration of the network caused by the recent bad weather. This represents the bringing forward of part of the additional one-off funding proposal for 2010/11.

2.4 The capital expenditure position for the Council in the financial year to the end of November and the year end projections detail in Appendix 3 of this report are noted.

2.5 The revenue virements listed for approval in Appendix 4(i) are agreed.

2.6 The changes in the capital programme listed in Appendix 5(i) are noted.

2.7 The additions to the 2009/10 capital programme as detailed in Appendix 6 are approved.

2.8 The rephasing of 2009/10 Capital Budgets to future years as detailed in Appendix 7 are approved.

2.9 The updated revenue position as at the end of December 2009, detailed in Appendix 8, is noted.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The financial implications are contained within the body of the report.

4 CORPORATE PRIORITIES

4.1 The annual service and resource planning process allocates scarce resources across services with alignment of these resources towards our corporate improvement priorities as set out in the Corporate Plan. This report monitors how the Council is performing against the financial targets set in February 2009 through the Budget setting process.

5 THE REPORT

5.1 The Budget Management Scheme requires that the Cabinet consider the revenue and capital monitoring position four times per year.

5.2 For revenue, where overspent, services are expected to seek compensating savings to try and bring budgets back to balance.

5.3 Appendix 1 highlights significant areas of forecast over and under spends. Appendix 2 outlines the Council's current revenue financial position for the 2009/10 financial year to the end of November 2009 by Cabinet Portfolio. The current forecast outturn position is an overspend of 0.36% or £0.456m. This is an improvement from the previous monitoring figures reported to 2^nd September 2009 Cabinet, when the position was a forecast £2.218m overspend (1.78%).

5.4 Appendix 3 outlines the current position for the 2009/10 Capital programme, currently forecasting spend of £86.3m which is £12.6m less that the revised budget of £99m, of which £13.5m is planned to be rephased into future years within the 2010/11 budget process, the balance being over/underspends or rephasings not yet confirmed. The total programme forecast to 2013/14 is expenditure of £322.5m which is £12.6m or 3.8% less than the budget. The total programme is likely to increase over time as more certainty is established over funding and approval of projects.

5.5 The Council's financial position, along with its financial management arrangements and controls are fundamental to continuing to plan and provide services in a managed way, particularly in light of the medium term financial challenge. Close monitoring of the financial situation provides information on new risks and pressures in service areas, and appropriate management actions are then identified and agreed to manage and mitigate those risks.

5.6 Following urgent meetings between the Cabinet and highways officers regarding the deterioration of the highways network caused by the recent bad weather, a proposal is contained within the recommendations of this report to increase the budget for highways maintenance by £0.5m to enable immediate action to be taken to increase repairs to the network. This one-off adjustment will be funded by drawdown from the Revenue Budget Contingency. The amount remaining in the contingency following this drawdown is £430k. The Budget proposals for 2010/11 include provision to maintain a prudent Revenue Budget Contingency of £1m.

5.7 Revenue budget virements which require cabinet approval are listed in Appendix 4(i). Technical budget adjustments are shown in Appendix 4(i) for information purposes.

5.8 Previously approved changes to the capital programme are listed in Appendix 5(i), while Appendix 5(ii) provides the updated capital programme allocated by Portfolio. Appendix 6 lists additions to the capital programme for approval by Cabinet. Appendix 7 details the 2009/10 budgets to be rephased to future years for approval by Cabinet.

5.9 The Council set up a recession reserve in February 2009 of £685,000. In addition, and in line with the Council resolution, subsequent allocations of Local Authority Business Growth Incentive grant (LABGI) have been added, giving a total of £1.061m. The allocations thus far are already in excess of the LABGI funding, and Cabinet need to be cautious in agreeing any further allocations in light of the overspends highlighted in this report, some of which are recession related, and the potential for further adverse financial impacts to emerge.

5.10 This report was originally on the agenda for the Cabinet meeting on 13^th January 2010, hence the figures reported are as at the end of November 2009. An additional appendix (Appendix 8) has been added to this report to give an update on the position as at 31^st December 2009, with details of any significant changes included in this appendix.

6 RISK MANAGEMENT

6.1 The substance of this report is part of the Council's risk management process. The key risks in the Council's budget are assessed annually by each Strategic Director, with these risks re-assessed on a monthly basis as part of the budget monitoring process.

7 EQUALITIES

7.1 This report provides information about the financial performance of the Council and therefore no specific equalities impact assessment has been carried out on the report.

8 RATIONALE

8.1 The report is presented as part of the reporting of financial management and budgetary control required by the Council.

9 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

9.1 None

10 CONSULTATION

10.1 Consultation has been carried out with the Deputy Leader of The Council & Cabinet Member for Resources, Strategic Directors, Section 151 Finance Officer, Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer.

11 ISSUES TO CONSIDER IN REACHING THE DECISION

11.1 This report deals with issues of a corporate nature.

12 ADVICE SOUGHT

12.1 The Council's Monitoring Officer (Council Solicitor) and Section 151 Officer will have had the opportunity to input to this report and have cleared it for publication.