The Cabinet agree to:
a) APPROVE the revised net revenue budget for 2026-27 of £1,654.5m [one thousand, six hundred and fifty-four million, five hundred thousand pounds], arising from the final funding announcements.
b) APPROVE that the increase in the net budget is reflected in increased spending where funding is from a consolidated grant (£115k [one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds] for Domestic Abuse and £0.3k [three hundred pounds]for Crisis and Resilience), with the transitional changes to the Revenue Support Grant of £6,570k [six thousand, five hundred and seventy thousand pounds] transferred to reserves.
c) APPROVE the reduction in retained business rates income from renewable energy £169.6k [one hundred and sixty-nine thousand, six hundred pounds] and collection fund deficit of £151.7k are balanced with a drawdown of £321.3k [three hundred and twenty-one thousand, three hundred pounds] from the local taxation reserve.
d) APPROVE the technical changes to transfer the residual balance of the £61.1m [sixty-one million, one hundred thousand pounds] previous years’ contributions and £20.2m [twenty million, two hundred thousand pounds] of future years’ KCC Safety Valve contributions to a new earmarked SEND reserve. This follows the government’s announcement that the Safety Valve Programme will cease on 1st April 2026 as a result of the introduction of the new High Needs Sustainability Grant.
e) APPROVE the one-off increase in member community grants for 2026-27 to £4,600 [four thousand six hundred pounds] per member.
f) NOTE the other late changes to the specific grants and minor technical changes as reflected in the updated High level 2026-27 Budget & 2026-29 Medium Term Financial Plan at appendix A and Key Service analysis at appendix B to the Cabinet report.
g) NOTE the impact of these late changes on the S25 assurance as shown in section 6 of the Cabinet report