Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance) introduced the report and highlighted the following points:

a)    There was a net forecast overspend for quarter two of £4.766 million which had decreased from £7.5 million in quarter one;

b)    Children’s Services projected overspend was £6.138 million which equated to an additional cost close to 10% of the budget and was not sustainable;

c)    David Northey (Interim Section 151 Officer) had worked closely with the Tracey Lee (Chief Executive) who had chaired the Children’s Services Transition Board to ensure children would get the care they required alongside  ensuring the council’s finances would remain robust;

d)    Adult Social Care had an overspend of £3.7 million which hadn’t increased since quarter one;

e)    There had been a significant increase of £1.5 million in home to school SEND public transport;

f)     Homelessness had a projected an overspend of £2.423 million pounds since the beginning of the 2023-24 financial year;

g)    £5.86 million of budget savings had been identified corporately which helped to offset the pressure which came from specific areas of the council;

h)    The original saving targets within budget were £23 million and  from period seven the projected forecast for savings were for £19 million, the remaining £4 million to be saved would hopefully be achieved in the coming months;

i)     The Capital Forecast Budget for 2023-28 had increased from £5.57 million to £6.29 million for the five year period;

j)     The Capital programme had a substantial increase to include £1.3 million for Plymouth and South Devon Freeport Terminal Development, £2.98 million for Tinside pool, the National Marine Park and other Marine projects, and a further £8.64 million for the Freeport.

David Northey (Interim Section 151 Officer) added:

k)    The Capital section of the report would go forward to Council at the next meeting on 20 November 2023.

The Cabinet agreed to -

1.    Note the forecast revenue monitoring position at Period 6 as set out in this report in the sum of £4.766m.

2.    Note the Capital Budget 2023-2028 is revised to £629.924m as shown in Table 1 and agreed to recommend these amendments to Full Council for approval.