Issue - meetings

This report presents the financial monitoring information for the Authority as a whole for the financial year 2017/18 to the end of October 2017.

Councillor Richard Samuel made an ad-hoc statement by saying that the monitoring report had been disappointing with a projected budget overspend of £3.751m.  Councillor Samuel expressed his concern that the officers recommendation was to use reserves to mitigate the overspend with planned savings of £1.6m now at risk.  Councillor Samuel also said that previous monitoring report suggested that budget overspend was £5.12m and felt that improvement in overspend was down to drawing out money from social care.  Councillor Samuel concluded his statement by hoping that next report would show an improvement in figures.

Councillor Charles Gerrish said that report format was different from previous months and it had covered a period of seven months.  The report had presented an improvement from the previous report and also an impact of the actions taken since the previous projection.  Paragraph 5.5 of the report highlighted cost pressures and paragraph 5.6 showed additional measures agreed with Adult Social Care - it should not to be seen as money taken out from social care.  Councillor Gerrish referred at the mitigating measures in 5.8 of the report and informed the meeting that the Revenue Budget Contingency Reserve funding figure had been agreed at the February 2017 Budget. Councillor Gerrish concluded his comments by taking the meeting through each portfolio budget and highlighted some of the Capital Projects.

Councillor Charles Gerrish moved the recommendations.

Councillor Paul Myers seconded the motion by saying that based on the improvement to the position reported to October Cabinet, there was currently no requirement to use non-earmarked reserves as part of these mitigations.  The Council's financial position, along with its financial management arrangements and controls, were fundamental to continuing to plan and provide services in a managed way, particularly in light of the medium term financial challenge.

The rest of the Cabinet Members highlighted financial pressures within their portfolios.

RESOLVED (unanimously) the Cabinet agreed that:

2.1  Strategic Directors should continue to work towards managing within budget in the current year for their respective service areas and develop an action plan of how this will be achieved, including not committing any unnecessary expenditure and stringent budgetary control.

2.2  This year’s revenue budget position as shown in paragraph 5.3 is noted.

2.3  The mitigations that will be required shown in paragraph 5.8, if the over budget position cannot be reduced by the end of the financial year, are noted.

2.4  The capital year end forecast detailed in paragraph 5.18 of this report, is noted.

2.5  The revenue virements listed for information in Appendix 2(i) are noted.

2.6  The changes in the capital programme listed in Appendix 3(i) are noted.