Agenda item

The attached report presents the revenue and capital outturn for 2022/23.  The report also refers to requests to carry forward specific revenue budget items to 2023/24 and to write-off revenue over budgets where recovery in future years would have an adverse impact on continuing service delivery.  It also refers to requests to re-phase specific capital budget items to 2023/24 and to remove net capital underspends.

Cllr Mark Elliott introduced the report, moved the officer recommendation and made the following statement:

“Again, this is a backward-looking report, this time setting out the revenue and capital outturn for 2022/23 - in other words, it reports how the council performed compared to the budget set out at the beginning of the year.

The main headline here is the extremely positive news that the council had a favourable outturn position of £60,000 in 2022/23.  In other words, we finished the year £60k better off than the budget predicted.

This is all the more impressive given that at Quarter 3 last year we were forecasting a £1.54m negative position, and in Q2 that figure was well north of £4m.  Balancing the books has been made extremely difficult for everyone by the national Tory government's financial incompetence, with the current Sunak administration seeming unable to stop the rot started by Johnson and accelerated by Truss and Kwarteng, and that affects local government as much as everyone else.

It's nothing I can take credit for of course, having only taken up this role in May, but I'd like to congratulate my predecessor, the officers and the previous cabinet, on their hard work in pulling that position back in line despite the pressures outside their control.  It demonstrates a really constructive, collaborative and positive approach to dealing with the financial pressures we, along with all other local authorities, are facing.

However, the overall figure does smooth over some significant variability between different services.  The main pressure continued to be in Children’s Services which resulted in an over budget position for that service of £5.4m during the year. 

This was largely mitigated by increased income in both Heritage & Transport services, by reduced borrowing costs, by higher interest earned on cash balances and by the release of corporate contingencies.

The year-end position of uncommitted non-earmarked reserves was £12.6m which is in line with the risk assessed requirements agreed in the 2022/23 Budget Report.

The capital spend in 2022/23 was £74m against a budget of £107m giving a variance of £33m. This is primarily because of the delivery time to complete some projects moving them into future financial periods.

The report seeks the Cabinet approval to the revenue carry forwards of £158k to fund commitments that will now take place in 2023/24, and to transfer the £60k net underspend to the Revenue Budget Contingency Reserve which provides for future revenue pressures during the year which can't be mitigated by management action.

So again, I'd like to thank officers for the production of the report, and for their hard work throughout the year.”

Cllr Manda Rigby seconded the report and made the following statement:

“I am very pleased to second this report and endorse all that my colleague Cllr Elliott has said.

First, I need to wholeheartedly echo his praise and thanks for all those who worked so hard to bring us in on budget. You don’t have to look too far to see examples of where local councils have not been able to do this. The quality of reporting is also worth highlighting, we have the information made available to us in a timely fashion to be able to make the decisions we need to in order to claw back overspends, or support income generation.

That bit is important. We haven’t managed to hit budget by stopping all activity and cutting it to the statutory bone. We have managed to hit it, whilst also delivering the vast majority of our priorities and what our community needs.

Being able to deliver our commitments has also relied a lot on external funding, and or grant applications. I long for a return to a time when local government is adequately funded, does not have to burn up cycles of officer time in preparing speculative bids against changing criteria, forcing councils to compete against each other for resources in an inefficient and non-strategic way. It is entirely in the governments gift to choose to fund local councils correctly, they have chosen not to do so.

I want to give special thanks whilst seconding this report to the highways team. Anyone who has tried to do personal construction work over the past year knows how both labour and materials costs have rocketed. Highways work in the council has not been immune to these pressures, but through good negotiation and management we have retained best value for our residents and have protected the income so necessary to the council’s finances.

Absolutely we can’t take for granted that we came and will continue to come in on budget. But we can rest assured we have a great team who have delivered and are best placed to deliver again.

I’m delighted to second the report.”

RESOLVED (unanimously):

(1)  To note the revenue budget outturn on budget position for 2022/23, after allowing for carry forwards and transfers to reserves.

(2)  To approve the revenue carry forward proposals listed in the tables in paragraph 3.7 of the report.

(3)  To approve that all other over budgets are written-off as an exception to the Budget Management Rules for 2022/23.

(4)  To approve the transfer of £0.06m to corporate earmarked reserves.

(5)  To note the revenue virements for 2022/23 reported for information in Appendix 2(i) of the report.

(6)  To note the reserve positions and the use of flexible capital receipts shown in paragraph 3.21 of the report.

(7)  To note the outturn position of the 2022/23 capital programme in paragraph 3.30, and the funding outlined in paragraph 3.32 of the report.

(8)  To approve the capital rephasing and write-off of net underspends as listed in Appendix 3 of the report.  This reflects the outturn spend position on projects against final budgets as detailed in Appendix 4(ii) of the report.