Decision details

To receive the revenue and capital budget monitor for the third quarter of the 2023/24 financial year.

1.  That a virement from centrally held budgets to service directorates in respect of costs of the additional Employer contributions to the Local Government Pension Scheme, amounting to £0.7m be authorised.

2.  That a one-off virement from the Redundancy Reserve to Children’s Services in respect of redundancies arising from the review of Children’s Centres, amounting to £67k be authorised.

3.  That slippage of £25.8m in the General Fund capital programme to 2024/25 be authorised.

That it be noted that:

(a)  The Council’s forecast overspend at the end of Quarter 3 was £17.81m. Overall this represented a further increase from the £8.2m reported at the end of Quarter 2. The risk was therefore high that the Council would be unable to balance its budget within the Capitalisation Direction, unless it draws upon the Budget Smoothing Reserve, other reserves and provisions and continued to take action to reduce expenditure and increase income.

(b)  The accounting adjustments of £6.978m attributable to the Balance Sheet and ledger reviews, and that these would mitigate the headline forecast outturn, reducing it from £17.81m to £10.83m. At this stage, no virements were being recommended until the end of the financial year when further work is concluded.

(c)  Service revenue budgets were forecast to overspend by £21.3m in 2023/24. There were Corporate overspends in respect of interest costs and receipts (£2.3m) and the MRP of £3.2m. This was balanced by an underspend on the Corporate Contingency budget (£7.7m) and a number of other variances within the Corporate budget amounting to £1.3m. Service and Corporate budgets combined are showing an overspend of £17.81m prior to the recommended virement of £6.98m.

(d)  Medium Term Financial Strategy Savings (MTFS) of £21.2m are expected to be delivered in 2023/24 against planned savings of £22.4m.

(e)  That the Capital programme was forecast to underspend in 2023/24 by £29.1m. Of this, £25.8m was due to delayed starts on various projects slippage and it is one of the recommendations of this report that approval is granted to slip this to 2024/25.