Issue - meetings

(1)            Mr Shipton submitted the Directorate’s financial monitoring report for the third quarter, which included issues identified in subsequent exception reports.  The table in the report showed the net variance as an amount and also as a percentage as requested at the last meeting.

(2)            Mr Shipton highlighted that the main area of concern continued to be the Adult Education Service which had not been able to reduce spend in line with the Learning and Skills Council’s funding reductions, had not been able to repay the loan to cover previous year’s deficits and had faced lower than expected enrolments leading to a reduction in fee income.  He identified two other areas at risk of overspend: the Coroners Service and the Arts Unit. In relation to the Coroners service Members expressed concern about KCC having to fund a service that was not within KCC’s control but was in our budget for historical reasons.  Mr Bainbridge informed Members that, in conjunction with other local authorities in a similar situation, they were lobbying the Local Government Association to take this issue up and had also lobbied Kent MPs.

(3)       Mr Shipton also drew Members’ attention to the additional expenditure on the day to day building maintenance budget which was forecast to overspend by £130,000 over and above that reported in the March report to Cabinet.  He stated that the Directorate were planning to cover this overspend, the deficit rollover from previous years, and a number of other one-off issues that had arisen during the year affecting the central budget, from reviewing reserves.

(4)       RESOLVED that the projected outturn for the Directorate as per the May Exemption Monitoring Report to Cabinet be noted.