Agenda item - Financial Outturn Report

Agenda item

Financial Outturn Report

Minutes:

The Interim Section 151 Officer presented a report on the Updated Position to the Financial Outturn 2020/21 following submission of the Draft Accounts for the consideration of Members.

 

Cabinet was informed that following the closure of the 2020/21 Accounts, Officers had felt it prudent to rerun the Financial Outturn Report for 2020/21. This had resulted in an overspend of £228,736,which was previously reported to Members, being corrected and that the position was now an underspend of £50,005. In addition to this, it was reported that General Fund Reserves were at £4.502m and Earmarked Reserves at £13.289m. Members were advised that the Earmarked Reserves included approximately £5m received from Central Government for non-collection of tax income in 2021, which woulddecrease over three years.

 

Members were advised that some reserves had not changed over a number of years and that the Corporate Management Team (CMT) had met in December 2022 to look at the applicability of the current reserves. Members’ attention was drawn to the information included within the report regarding the amount of Covid-19 Grant funding received from Central Government during the pandemic. It was highlighted that £29m worth of grant funding had to be administered during 2020/21 which was a huge increase from the usual £15m received in grant funding.

 

During consideration of the report, the significant amount of work undertaken by the Finance Team, at a time when there were lower staffing levels, was acknowledged by Members.

 

Reference was made to the work currently being undertaken with the external auditors, Grant Thornton. It was reported that the Council had been presented with a list of 84 deliverables by Grant Thornton, all of which were currently being worked through. In addition to this, it was confirmed that Officers were meeting regularly with Grant Thornton, both face-to-face and virtually.

 

Members queried whether it would be usual for external auditors to carry out hybrid meetings. It was confirmed that as hybrid working arrangements were embedded within Council, Grant Thornton were content to undertake work in this way. However, it was reported that Grant Thornton had not requested training on the Council’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which could potentially result in a large amount work being carried out by Officers over the coming months. Members requested that they be kept informed of matters in this area.

 

Reference was also made to the administering of the grant funding and whether this would form part of the external audit; particularly in light of fraud being identified nationally during the administering of Covid-19 grant funding. Members were informed that regular returns had been made by the Council to Government in respect of the Covid-19 Grant funding and these returns had been accepted. Officers reported that a combination of the Council’s use of BACS payments and the measured way in which the grants were initially administered had limited potential fraudulent activity in this area.

 

RESOLVED that

 

1)              the revenue outturn position, which was reported as an overspend of £228,736 be corrected to a position of an underspend of £50,005;

2)              the final Covid-19 Grant position was £766k;

3)              the final level of General Fund and Earmarked Reserves were £4.502m and £13,289m respectively;

and

4)              the final capital position for the year was an underspend of £1.616m.

Supporting documents: