Agenda item

Colleen Warren, Financial Services Manager:

a)    presented Performance Scrutiny Committee with the first quarter’s performance (up to 30 June 2021)

b)    explained that the unprecedented impact of Covid-19 had on the Council’s finances in 2020/21, budgets for 2021/22 were revised as part of the MTFS 2021-26 based on a number of assumptions around the speed and extent of the national and local recoveries. Whilst in many cases the assumptions reflected the actual position to date, there were still some areas where the rate of recovery impacted adversely on the Council’s finances. Close monitoring of the position and implementation of mitigating actions over quarters 2-4 was key to ensuring the Council maintained a balances budget position for 2021/22

c)    provided information on the Council’s:

·         General Fund Revenue Account - the General Fund revenue budget was set at £978,410, which included a planned contribution from balances of £477,240 (resulting in an estimated level of general balances at the year-end of £2,193,359).

The General Fund Summary was projecting a forecast overspend of £199,432 (shown in Appendix A), which resulted in a general balance at the year-end of £1,993,927.

Full details of the main variances were detailed in Appendix B and the key variances were shown in the table at paragraph 3.3 of the report.

·         Housing Revenue Account (HRA) – for 2021/22 the Council’s HRA net revenue budget was set at £14,910, resulting in an estimated level of general balances at the year-end of £1,059,743.

Full details of the main variances were provided in Appendix D with the key variances shown in the table at paragraph 4.3 of the report.

·         Housing Repairs Service – the financial performance quarterly monitoring report for the 1^st quarter predicted a deficit of £718,835 in 2021/22. Appendix E provided a forecast HRS Summary with the main variances provided in Appendix F of the report.

d)    provided information on:

·         General Investment Programme – the original General Investment Programme for 2021/22 in the MTFS 2021-26 amounted to £14.393m which was increased to £16.941m following quarter 4 approval and year end re-profiles from 2020/21. At quarter 1 the programme had been increased by £0.510m to £17.451m, as shown in the table in paragraph 7.2 of the report.

The overall spending on the General Investment Programme for the first quarter of 2021/22 was £1.415m, which was 8% of the 2021/22 programme and 8.25% of the active programme.

·         Housing Investment Programme – the original Housing Investment Programme for 2021/22 in the MTFS 2021-26 amounted to £22.491m. This was increased to £25.839m following approvals and year end re-profiles as part of the 2020/21 outturn. This had been further adjusted to £29.047m during the first quarter of 2021/22. A summary of the changes was shown in paragraph 7.8 of the report.

Expenditure against the Housing Investment Programme budget to the first quarter was £2.328m, which was 8.01% of the revised programme. A further £1.02m had been spent as at the end of July 2021. The expenditure was detailed further in Appendix L of the report.

e)    invited members’ comments and questions.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.