Agenda item

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(Report of the Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement, Mr J Simmonds, and Corporate Director of Finance and Procurement, Andy Wood)

Cabinet received a report providing for consideration, the provisional revenue and capital budget outturn position for 2013-14, which included a final update on key activity data.  In addition the report contained a summary of the contribution of each Directorate toward the successful financial outturn reported.

The Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement introduced the report for Members.  With regard to the revenue budget he reported the following information:

       i.        That £95million of savings had been achieved despite already having made £105million in the two previous years and that delivery of a 14^th consecutive balanced budget in such circumstances was a significant achievement.

      ii.        That a final underspend of £9.8million excluding schools had been reported after having transferred £4million to reserves with the agreement of Council to support the 2014-15 budget.

    iii.        That after rolling forward monies required as a result of rephasing commitments listed within the report, the remaining £4.7million would also be credited to the Economic Downturn Reserve.

    iv.        That congratulations were owed to all directorates for the achievement reported.

      v.        Individual Directorate performance was as follows::

a.    Education, Learning and Skills despite continuing pressures had reported a saving of £1.8million

b.    Specialist Children’s Services whilst it continued to experience approximately £3million of underlying pressures had shown some signs of stabilisation, although fostering continued to present particular difficulties.

c.    Adult Social Care had reported significant savings of approximately £18million as a result of the Adult Transformation Programme and work undertaken with the NHS support for social care funds.

d.    Enterprise and Environment had reported a £3million overspend but as widely reported had spent £4.9million on ‘Find and Fix’ to repair highway damage caused by the extreme weather conditions experienced in the winter months.

e.    Customer and Communities had reported an excellent saving of £6.3million largely as a result of clever vacancy management and work with the Libraries and Registration service.

f.     That £3.7million of government funding above that which had been predicted had been received in the financial year and had been committed to the Economic Downturn Reserve.

The Cabinet Member continued to the Capital Budget and reported that:

a.     That the working budget for 2013-14 had been £256million and the actual spend reported was £203million.  The individual variances which constituted the overall £53million variance were almost exclusively the result of rephasing and would be rolled over to the 2014-15 budgets.

Corporate Director for Finance and Procurement, Andy Wood spoke to make two points.  Firstly, he reiterated the appreciation expressed by the Cabinet Member for the hard work of officers and Members that had ensured the delivery of a successful budget and secondly to remind members that the £9.8million of savings reported, represented approximately 1% of budget and therefore illustrated the fine lines that existed between delivering targets and overspending and further evidenced the need for the hard work to be continued.

It was RESOLVED that