Agenda item

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

Councillor Richard Samuel said that the Council had used £1,349m of both the Social Care Reserve and the Care Act Reserve to bolster the Adult Social Care overspend, and said that money should be added to the total overspend.

Councillor Will Sandry expressed his concerns for the tragic position that the Council and its residents were, and felt that the current financial position was down to austerity.  Councillor Sandry questioned the impact of Virgin Care on Council’s costs.

At this point of the meeting Councillor Paul May said that he wasn’t aware that Virgin Care would be debated under this agenda item so he declared an ‘Other’ interest as he was non-Executive Member of the Sirona Board.

Maria Lucas (Monitoring Officer) granted a dispensation in relation to Councillor May’s interest on the Sirona Board.  (The dispensation granted by the Monitoring Officer is available on the Minute Book at Democratic Services).

Councillor Tim Warren said that the Social Care Reserve and the Care Act Reserve were there to be used to partially mitigate the Adult Social Care revenue budget position.

Councillor Tim Warren also said that this report had presented the financial monitoring information for the Authority as a whole for the financial year 2017/18 to the end of August 2017.  For revenue budgets which were forecast to be overspent, the Divisional Directors were expected to seek compensating savings to try and bring budgets back to balance.  Appendix 1 of the report had highlighted any significant areas of forecast over and under spends in revenue budgets.  Appendix 2 had outlined the Council’s current revenue financial position for the 2017/18 financial year to the end of August 2017 by Cabinet Portfolio.  The current forecast outturn position was an overspend of £5,125,000 which equates to 1.64% of gross budgeted spend (excluding Schools).

Councillor Tim Warren moved the recommendations.

Councillor Paul May seconded the motion by saying that the Council had done a lot of work to make required savings.  Councillor May recognised current forecast service pressures on Adult and Children Services and said that the use of reserves was justified in short term.

RESOLVED (unanimously) that the Cabinet agreed to:

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)  This year’s revenue budget position as shown in Appendix 2 is noted.

3)  The actions agreed by Strategic Directors in paragraph 5.4 are noted.

4)  The mitigations that will be required paragraph 5.5, if the overspend cannot be reduced by the end of the financial year, are noted.

5)  The capital expenditure position for the Council in the financial year to the end of August and the year end projections detailed in Appendix 3 of this report are noted.

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

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