Agenda item

To receive a report that provides the provisional revenue and capital budget outturn position for 2016-17, including a final update on key activity data for the highest risk budgets

(Item 4 – report of Mr John Simmonds, Cabinet Member for Finance and Andy Wood, Corporate Director of Finance

Cabinet received a report which provided the provisional revenue and capital budget outturn position for 2016-17, including a final update on key activity for the highest risk budgets.

Mr J Simmonds, MBE, Cabinet Member for Finance, introduced the report.  In particular he referred to the following information:

·         This was the 17^th consecutive year the Council had set a balanced budget. The provisional outturn showed an underspend of £3.77m

·         Despite the SEN transport budget overspending by £2.6m, the directorate managed to offset a significant proportion of this pressure and ended the financial year with a net overspend of just over £1m.

·         The overall outturn position of Specialist Children’s Services was an overspend of £5,465k of which £966k related to Asylum. This pressure had been reduced from earlier forecasts partly due to management action in reducing accommodation costs but also reflected a settlement from the Home office of £766k towards the shortfall in funding.

·         There was a small underspend of £241k for Adult Social Care. This was a substantial achievement considering the significant pressures for direct Services.

·         The overall position for Public Health was a £3m underspend which had been transferred into the Public Health reserve leaving a small movement of -£0.2k relating to roll forward commitments.

·         The GET Directorates outturn position after roll forward requirements was a commendable net underspend of -£255k. This underspend was delivered despite in year pressures of £3m arising from activity led pressures including Waste, Young Persons Travel Pass, Coroners and Highways Asset Management. It was also noted that the cost of disposing of each tonne of waste material was now less than it was five years ago, as well KCC achieving one of the lowest waste to landfill % in the country.

·         Strategic and Corporate Services outturn was an underspend of -£1,453k

·         The Schools delegated budget had overspent by £23m which was due to £2.219m as a result of 21 schools converting to academy status and taking their accumulated reserves with them, £4.003m use of school unallocated reserves to offset pressures on High Needs and Early Years education, £10.303m use of unallocated reserves to fund in year schools related pressures, particularly growth in both mainstream and high needs pupil numbers, £7.120m use of schools reserves for the remaining Kent schools. As a result schools reserves had reduced from £46.361m to £22.716m

·         There was a shortfall in the dividend from Commercial Services of £1.227m which was primarily due to a significant decline in market conditions and a slower growth than anticipated in Connect2staff.

·         There was a reported variance with the capital programme of £81m, £77m which related to rephrasing.

·         Mr Simmonds paid credit to Directors and their staff for all their continued hard work and stated that budget savings were getting increasing difficult to manage each year.

The Leader, Mr P Carter CBE, also thanked all the staff for their hard work in managing their budgets to enable the council to get to a balanced position overall.

It was RESOLVED