Issue - meetings

(a)       That the Revenue Budget Monitoring 2015/16 (Month 10) report be received;

(b)       That the Committee confirms that it is not making any formal recommendations to Cabinet on this occasion. 

The Corporate Finance Manager introduced a report to provide Members with the Revenue Budget Monitoring 2015/16 (Month 10) for the Council Fund and Housing Revenue Account (HRA) which was to be submitted to Cabinet on 19 April 2016.

                        For the Council Fund, the projected net in-year expenditure was forecast to be £1.110m lower than budget.  Appendix 1 detailed the movements from Month 9 which included an efficiency of £0.116m in Governance that would not be achieved in 2015/16 and a projected under-recovery of contribution to the pension fund of £0.178m in Central & Corporate Finance; both of these figures had been offset by an underspend in Social Services and in Central & Corporate Finance. 

                        Appendix 3 provided details of the latest position of the programme of efficiencies and it was projected that £10.628m (83%) would be achieved resulting in a net underachievement of £2.246m.  On the issue of inflation, it was anticipated that £0.064m for food inflation would not be required and there was a surplus of £0.061m remaining from inflation set aside for pay.  Therefore £0.125m was now projected to underspend and the balance of 2014/15 inflation and £0.110m from the in-year inflation had been included as an efficiency within the 2016/17 budget.  Taking into account previous allocations and the current underspend at Month 9, the balance on the contingency reserve at 31 March 2016 was projected to be £4.746m.  The Corporate Finance Manager advised that various requests to carry forward funding into 2016/17 had been identified and details were shown in appendix 6; all were recommended for approval. 

                      The Month 10 Monitoring Report for the HRA was projecting in-year expenditure to be £0.092m lower than budget and a projected closing balance as at 31 March 2016 of £1.329m was 4.3% of total expenditure which satisfied the prudent approach of ensuring a minimum level of 3%. 

                        Councillor Haydn Bateman asked whether appeals as a result of Single Status had been budgeted for.  In response, the Corporate Finance Manager said that a closure report on Single Status had previously been submitted to Cabinet and added that there were some outstanding elements such as appeals but a provision had been included in the budget for this.  

            RESOLVED:

(a)       That the Revenue Budget Monitoring 2015/16 (Month 10) report be received;

(b)       That the Committee confirms that it is not making any formal recommendations to Cabinet on this occasion.