Agenda item
Quarter 2 Finance Monitoring Report
Minutes:
The Director of Finance and Corporate Resources presented the Finance Monitoring Report for the period April to September 2014. Members were advised that the additional information that had been requested by the Board in respect of income and expenditure would be included in reports from the new financial year, following the introduction of the new finance system.
During the delivery of this report the following matters were highlighted for Members’ consideration:
· There would be a number of recharges at the end of the year between Councils involved in sharing services as well as between departments at the Council which would influence the final budget figures for 2014/15.
· The income target of £204,000 for Environmental Services would not be met by the end of the financial year due to the decision made in respect of Trade Waste Service.
· Officers were now anticipating that there would be a revenue underspend at the end of the year of £210,000.
· There had been an assumption that a significant amount of capital expenditure would have been made on projects during the period. However, as many of these projects had experienced delays capital expenditure had been much lower than anticipated. As a consequence the Council would no longer be borrowing funding as originally anticipated.
· Parkside would not be ready for the Council to use until at least April/May 2015, the move may be postponed until after the local and national elections had taken place.
· The figure that had been provided in the report for the Town Centre Development - Project Management was incorrect as the level of expenditure had been counted twice.
Following presentation of the report a number of issues were discussed in further detail by the Board.
· Arrangements for capital expenditure and the potential for a breakdown of the Council’s capital programme to be provided.
· The extent to which assumptions in the budget were based on a realistic analysis of future demand and lessons that could be learned when planning the budget in the future.
· The savings that the Bromsgrove Urban and Rural Transport (BURT) were predicted to achieve by the end of the year and the potential for these savings to be used to fund other community transport projects in the district.
· The locations in which the BURT service operated and eligibility criteria. The Chairman suggested that further information on this subject had been provided to the Board in previous years and he requested that this be reported for Members’ consideration at ta future meeting.
· The energy efficiency home insulation project and the Council’s approach to promoting the service.
· The projected variance in expenditure on customer services and the reasons for this variance.
· The impact of the reduction in funding for Customers Services made by Worcestershire County Council and the impact that this had had on demand for customer services at the district level.
· The £371,000 overspend on refuse and recycling services included both the £250,000 that had not been secured following the decision to not sell the trade waste service as well as £121,000 for vehicle breakdowns and replacement vehicle hire.
· The reduction in income from car parking charges and whether the sale of the Stourbridge Road car park had been taken into account when calculating the budget for future years. Officers explained that the sale was unlikely to proceed until the following financial year.
RESOLVED that the report be noted.
Supporting documents:
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