Issue - meetings

The Head of Finance and Customer Services presented the Financial Outturn Report 2022/23 and stated that the report outlined the Council’s provisional revenue and capital outturn positions for 2022-2023.

Cabinet was informed that from a revenue perspective, the Council had a £12.068m full year revenue budget which was approved by Council in March 2022.

Members were reminded that the 2022/23 budget included a £478k cross-cutting efficiency target, of which £424k was allocated to services based upon forecast underspends at Quarter 1 predominantly linked to vacancies.

Whilst the Council had been on a Finance Recovery Programme since April 2022, it was important to note that the 2020/21 and 2021/22 accounts had still not been closed and that this could have an impact upon the 2022/23 position.

It was reported that the Finance Team had undertaken a detailed review of the 2022/23 accounts since the end of March 2023, and there were a number of assumptions and manual adjustments made to arrive at the provisional outturn position detailed in the report. These assumptions included:

·       Anticipated accruals and prepayments,

·       Grants are applied to known expenditure and remaining balances are carried forward,

·       Reserves are applied to expenditure,

·       Shared service recharges between Bromsgrove District and Redditch Borough Councils were manually reflected, and

·       Transfers between the Collection Fund and the General Fund.

The Head of Finance and Customer Services noted that there was still work to be done in order to clear the backlog of entries in suspense and any miscoding. Therefore, the provisional position detailed in the report was subject to change and a further update would be provided in due course.

Overall, it was anticipated that the provisional revenue overspend position would be a £956k overspend against the £12.068m budget. This was a £54k increase over the forecast at Quarter 3 which was a £902k overspend position.

Members attention was drawn to the financial position per service area along with supporting service narrative.

It was reported that the 2022/23 pay award - £1,925 pay award across all pay scales – had created a variance against budget for a number of service areas.

Cabinet was informed that overspends were anticipated within the following service areas:

·       Environmental Services - largely due to the implications of the pay award.

·       Financial & Customer Services - due to implications of the pay award, temporary staffing requirements and reduced court costs/housing benefit overpayments recovered, however this could change pending income reallocation.

·       Legal, Democratic and Property Services - predominantly due to a budget pressure linked to the contract with SLM to deliver Leisure Management Services. It was noted that the leisure sector continues to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore a cost pressure had been seen in this area.

From a Treasury Management perspective, the Council had £3.7m short-term borrowing at 31^st March 2023 and no long-term borrowing. It was noted that the Council also held £1.2m in short-term investments.

Information regarding Capital monitoring was provided within the report, and Cabinet was informed that an updated Capital  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42