Agenda item

To consider the attached report regarding the Council’s Treasury Management Strategy.  The Authority is required to approve a treasury management strategy before the start of each financial year.

Cllr Richard Samuel introduced the report and made the following statement:

“The Council is required to have a Treasury Management Strategy that sets out the Council’s policies for managing its investments and how the security and liquidity of those investments will be secured.

The strategy is kept under continuous review and regularly reported to the Cabinet and Council throughout the financial year. Each year the policy is updated to reflect wider market conditions. The content of the strategy is set out in the report. The role of the cabinet today is to consider the proposed strategy before its presentation to the full meeting of the Council next week as the 22/23.

The main changes to the 21/22 strategy are as follows:

The most substantive change last year was the inclusion of an Environmental, Social and Governance section to the document.  As this was new last year, a lot of detail was included in the 2021/22 TMS but this has been reduced this year making the section more proportionate to the overall TMS.

Some of the other updates this year relate to the changes in the revised CIPFA Prudential Code for Capital Finance in Local Authorities which was issued on 20 December 2021.  This revised Code has been released as a soft launch for the 2022/23, and as such full compliance with the code is not required until 2023/24.  However wherever practicable, alignments to the revised code have been made in 2022/23.

I would draw the Cabinet’s attention to the looming black clouds over the UK economy. Growth has slowed to below the Eurozone. Inflation is way over the Bank of England target of 2%. There are few levers available to the bank to control the inflation in prices as the majority are driven by commodity prices. The deflationary acts of the April National Insurance rise and the simultaneous rise in energy prices will drive down consumption and interest rate rises will further deflate the economy. The Bank expects 2022/23 to be a very difficult year for UK citizens, with prices exceeding wage growth. This has clear implications for discretionary hospitality spending.”

Cllr Samuel then moved the recommendations set out in the report.  

Cllr Tom Davies seconded the motion stating that he supported Cllr Samuel’s remarks.

RESOVED (unanimously) to recommend the Cabinet on 11 February 2022

(1)  To recommend the actions proposed within the Treasury Management Strategy Statement (Appendix 1 of the report) to February Council.

(2)  To note the Treasury Management Indicators detailed in Appendix 1 of the report and to delegate authority for updating the indicators prior to approval at Full Council on 16 February 2022 to the Chief Finance Officer and Cabinet Member for Economic Development & Resources, in light of any changes to the recommended budget as set out in the Budget Report elsewhere on the agenda for this meeting.

(3)  To note that any comments made by the Corporate Audit Committee at its meeting on 3 February 2022 will be reported to Full Council on 15 and 16 February 2022.