Agenda item

Budget Management Report Quarter 1

Decision:

To approve the following:

 

  1. General Fund (Revenue) – A projected outturn of £171.568m, being £11.817m overspend (7%) on an approved budget of £160.202m.

 

  1. A virement of £1.000m from the Contingency budget to the Corporate Resources budget in respect of a savings target for Business Rates Income that will not be realised until 2025/26  . 

 

  1. Subject to appropriate due diligence, develop the suite of Recovery Actions to deliver mitigations of up to £11.423m as outlined in Appendix 9 .

 

  1. Approve the following actions:

 

 

£m

Adult Social Care reserve – Defer recruitment for an additional Financial Assessment and Benefits Officer

0.150

Better Care Fund reserve – utilise carry forward

2.667

Public Health reserve – Uncommitted reserve to meet eligible public health overspend within the General Fund

0.081

TOTAL

2.898

 

 

 

That Cabinet note the following based on the above approvals:

 

 

A table with numbers and a few words Description automatically generated

 

  1. General Fund (GF) (Capital) – The revised capital budget (approved at July cabinet) is £35.428m with a projected outturn of £33.560m resulting in underspend of £1.868m.

 

  1. Housing Revenue Account (HRA Revenue) – A surplus of £3.734m is forecast against a budgeted surplus of £3.477m, a favourable variance of £0.257m.

 

  1. Housing Revenue Account (HRA Capital) – The revised capital budget (approved at July cabinet) is £25.003m with a projected outturn of £16.941m resulting in an underspend of £8.062m.

 

  1. Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) – There is an overspend of £0.155m in the Schools Block due to higher than anticipated costs for growth in 2024/25. Further details are set out in para. 7 of this report including the risks

 

  1. Council Tax and Business Rates collection – As at 30 June 2024, actual council tax collected was 28.05% (target 29.10%) and actual business rate collected was 29.75% (target 30.5%).

 

  1. Sundry Debt – Total outstanding sundry debt including adult social care debt as at 30 June 2024 was £13.848m. Based on the age profile of the debt, £5.342m is the calculated bad debt provision (39%).

 

  1. Financial Resilience – The Council remains committed to improving financial resilience, moving towards financial sustainability and improvement in governance and process as laid out in the Directions issued by Government and a capitalisation direction for exceptional finance support in 2024/25.

 

  1. Once the Council has concluded the outstanding financial accounts, a formal financial resilience statement will be prepared.

 

Minutes:

The Lead Member for Finance, Council Assets and Transformation introduced a report that set out the Council’s current and forecast financial performance for the 2024/25 financial year as at the end of the first quarter to 30th June 2024.  The report also detailed the management controls and activity to support financial resilience and the longer-term financial sustainability of the Council.

 

It was recognised that the Council’s financial position remained challenging, however, the 2024/25 budget was currently forecast to balance, subject to approval of the proposed recommendations in the report.  The projected outturn was £171.6m against a budget of £160.2m, which would be an overspend of £11.8m.  To address this position approval was sought for a package of mitigating actions in Appendix 9 totalling £11.4m to offset this projected overspend and balance the budget.  Further details of some of the proposed in-year savings was set out in the Part II Appendix 10 which was considered during Part I of the meeting without disclosing any of the exempt information.

 

The Cabinet discussed the main areas of overspend which included increased pressures on the adult social care and temporary accommodation budgets.  Members welcomed the early identification of the overspends to enable action to be taken.  It was recognised that there were significant financial risks and the fact the Council had several years of unaudited accounts meant there remained some uncertainty about the financial baseline.  Further work was taking place to review the position since the end of the first quarter and this would be presented to Cabinet later in the year.  The new finance team was carrying out a significant amount of work on the backlog of accounts, finance improvement plan, managing the 2024/25 budget and preparing the 2025/26 budget and medium term financial strategy.  The Chief Executive highlighted that the challenging financial environment for local government, and particularly Slough, which would put pressure on services and tough decisions would be needed to move the authority towards a sustainable financial position.

 

The Cabinet thanked officers for the considerable amount of work being undertaken and welcomed the transparent and proactive approach.  The recommendations were then approved.

 

Resolved –

 

That the following be approved:

 

  1. General Fund (Revenue) – A projected outturn of £171.568m, being £11.817m overspend (7%) on an approved budget of £160.202m.

 

  1. A virement of £1.000m from the Contingency budget to the Corporate Resources budget in respect of a savings target for Business Rates Income that will not be realised until 2025/26  . 

 

  1. Subject to appropriate due diligence, develop the suite of Recovery Actions to deliver mitigations of up to £11.423m as outlined in Appendix 9.

 

  1. Approved the following actions:

 

 

£m

Adult Social Care reserve – Defer recruitment for an additional Financial Assessment and Benefits Officer

0.150

Better Care Fund reserve – utilise carry forward

2.667

Public Health reserve – Uncommitted reserve to meet eligible public health overspend within the General Fund

0.081

TOTAL

2.898

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Cabinet note the following based on the above approvals:

 

A table with numbers and a few words Description automatically generated

 

  1. General Fund (GF) (Capital) – The revised capital budget (approved at July cabinet) is £35.428m with a projected outturn of £33.560m resulting in underspend of £1.868m.

 

  1. Housing Revenue Account (HRA Revenue) – A surplus of £3.734m is forecast against a budgeted surplus of £3.477m, a favourable variance of £0.257m.

 

  1. Housing Revenue Account (HRA Capital) – The revised capital budget (approved at July cabinet) is £25.003m with a projected outturn of £16.941m resulting in an underspend of £8.062m.

 

  1. Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) – There is an overspend of £0.155m in the Schools Block due to higher than anticipated costs for growth in 2024/25. Further details are set out in para. 7 of this report including the risks

 

  1. Council Tax and Business Rates collection – As at 30 June 2024, actual council tax collected was 28.05% (target 29.10%) and actual business rate collected was 29.75% (target 30.5%).

 

  1. Sundry Debt – Total outstanding sundry debt including adult social care debt as at 30 June 2024 was £13.848m. Based on the age profile of the debt, £5.342m was the calculated bad debt provision (39%).

 

  1. Financial Resilience – The Council remained committed to improving financial resilience, moving towards financial sustainability and improvement in governance and process as laid out in the Directions issued by Government and a capitalisation direction for exceptional finance support in 2024/25.

 

  1. Once the Council has concluded the outstanding financial accounts, a formal financial resilience statement would be prepared.

Supporting documents: