Issue - meetings

The attached report presents the financial monitoring information for the Authority as a whole for the financial year 2022/23, using information available as at the end of December 2022.

Cllr Richard Samuel introduced the report, moved the officer recommendations and made the following statement:

“I gave a commitment at the start of this administration that the council would spend within its means each year. What that meant was delivering planned savings and efficiencies each year, properly budgeting for major projects, and most importantly bringing the council’s budget in on target each year. In normal times that would have been a challenging aspiration but when a global pandemic from 2020 to 2021, a European war in Ukraine, and the ineptness of the Government in creating runaway inflation are factored in it has become even tougher. From 2019 to 2022 this administration has kept to spending plans and not allowed expenditure to exceed income and thereby ensured that scarce council reserves were not used to balance the books. When I reported on Quarter 2 it looked as if we might miss our target this financial year. High energy costs and profiteering by the energy companies together with interest rate rises alongside other inflation meant that suddenly the council was faced with huge additional costs in year. However, this was compounded by substantial rises in Children’s safeguarding presentations and provider costs to the extent that this threatened to blow the council’s entire budget off course.

However, I am pleased to note that the situation at the end of Quarter 3 has dramatically improved so that an overspend of £1.5m is now projected and I am confident this will further reduce by the year although I do not expect the budget to be in credit at year end.

At this point I must place my thanks to the Chief Executive and the Management team for their efforts in tackling the Quarter 2 position and reversing the serious position that was recorded then. Their efforts have led to the improved forecast and demonstrate the benefit of reporting financial performance in public.

I will not repeat the detail of the individual movements in the report they are there for the cabinet to see. I will however highlight the need for the council to closely examine and review the demands on children’s social services which are in danger of outstripping this authority’s ability to pay. This is a national problem affecting all upper tier councils and I am sorry to say that our so-called government has only partially taken notice of the pleas from the sector to address the huge funding shortfall which was noted by the LGA to fail to address the estimated 1.5bn shortfall nationally simply to keep pace with inflation.

In B&NES have asked the management team to begin work urgently to examine how we can better control costs and begin to return to the provision of early years services as a key preventative measure. This will take up much of the next administration’s time and energy but is crucial as the overruns in children’s services are now an existential threat to the council’s financial stability.”

Cllr Warren seconded the motion and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63