Issue - meetings

Matter for Decision

The report presented a summary of the 2014/15 outturn position (actual income and expenditure) for services within the Finance & Resources Portfolio, compared to the final budget for the year.  The position for revenue and capital was reported and variances from budgets were highlighted, together with explanations.  Requests to carry forward funding arising from certain budget underspends into 2015/16 were identified.

Decision of Executive Councillor for Finance and Resources

The Executive Councillor:

     i.        Agreed the carry forward requests totalling £153,310 as detailed in Appendix C of the Officer’s report, to be recommended to Council for approval.

    ii.        Agreed to seek approval from Council to carry forward capital resources to fund rephased net capital spending of £1,542,000 from 2014/15 into 2015/16, as detailed in Appendix D of the Officer’s report.

Reason for the Decision

As set out in the Officer’s report.

Any Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

Not applicable.

Scrutiny Considerations

The Committee received a report from the Head of Finance regarding the 2014/15 outturn position.

The Committee made the following comments in response to the report:

     i.        There appeared to be significant slippage on a number of items in the Capital Programme.

    ii.        Requested that more details on slippages be included in future reports.

In response to Members’ questions the Head of Finance said that whilst the Capital Plan did phase planned spending, slippages still happened.

Councillor Owers stated that this report was based on the budget set by the previous administration. In future, slippages would be reviewed and would be subject to removal from the plan. . Later on the agenda of the meeting there was an item on Capital Plan Processes which sought to introduce a new system to remedy the slippage problems inherited from the previous administration. He acknowledged that some projects, such as Clay Farm, were dependant on external bodies and therefore slippages were beyond the control of the council.

The Committee resolved by 6 votes to 0 to endorse the recommendations.

The Executive Councillor approved the recommendations.