Issue - meetings

Matter for Decision

The report presented a summary for all the Portfolios of the actual income and expenditure compared to the final budget for 2015/16 (outturn position). The revenue and capital budget variances with explanations as reported to individual Executive Councillors and Scrutiny Committees and specific requests to carry forward funding available from budget underspends into 2016/17.

Decision of Executive Councillor for Finance and Resources

To seek Council approval for the:

     i.        Carry forward requests totalling £485.3k revenue funding from 2015/16 to 2016/17 as detailed in Appendix C.

    ii.        Carry forward requests of £18,616k (including 2,171k relating to the Housing Capital Investment Plan) capital resources from 2015/16 to 2016/17 to fund rephrased net capital spending as detailed in Appendix D – Overview.

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.

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

     i.        Asked for the Executive Councillor’s comments on a revenue underspend of 15.4% and capital HRA and General Fund 40% underspend.

    ii.        Questioned the Environmental Improvement variance on p388 of the agenda pack. Asked that the Executive Councillor worked with his colleagues to deliver the projects and expressed concern regarding the internal audit report which was reported to the Civic Affairs Committee on 29 June 2016.

The Executive Councillor made the following comments:

    i.          The areas of underspend would be looked at to see whether a permanent saving could be made or if it was a one-time specific instance. With regards to the HRA the Council wanted to invest and had an ambitious capital programme.

  ii.          The Environmental Improvement programme involved a lot of small schemes which took time to complete. He would work with colleagues to try to ensure that schemes were completed but commented that these schemes did take a lot of officer time.

The Committee resolved by 4 votes to 0 to endorse the recommendations.

The Executive Councillor approved the recommendations.

Conflicts of Interest Declared by the Executive Councillor (and any Dispensations Granted)

No conflicts of interest were declared by the Executive Councillor.