Councillor Nick Kelly (Leader) and Brendan Arnold (Service Director for Finance) presented the Finance Monitoring Report December 2021 –

This was the 3rd quarter reporting for the financial year 2021/22. As this was a quarterly report, it covered both the revenue forecast and capital position, now as at the end of December 2021

We continued to see a fluctuation and report a further improvement from last month, and from the last quarter’s report at September.

The forecast revenue outturn after the application of Covid grants and council mitigating actions was currently estimated at £526,000 over budget. Last month it reported £744,000, an improvement of £218,000 in the month.

The movement this month was mainly within two Directorates:

Customer & Corporate Services Directorate had further improved from last month’s £618,000 over to a minimal £24,000 over. A favourable movement of £594,000. I was assured this would achieve a balanced position by the year end and we are already very close. This movement was attributed to further vacancy management and treasury savings plus training underspends and some Covid grant offsets.

Last month It was reported an adverse movement on Children’s to an over spend of £414,000. This month we are reporting an over spend of £1.091m an adverse movement of £677,000. 

Of this, £362,000 related to a shortfall against savings within Education, Participation and Skills; a £201,000 pressure within Children’s Social Work relating to increased assessment costs; and a further £114,000 due to increased interagency fees with the Regional Adoption Agency.

The Directorate were doing everything they could to mitigate as much as possible of this over spend, but time was running out in the current year.

This adverse movement was offset by the improving position within the Customer & Corporate Services Directorate and also by a £284,000 improvement from corporate items.  Please be assured, officers and Members would work closely to manage the overall finances towards a balanced position by the end of the year.

We would continue to show the position of the additional costs and income lost due to Covid, which was currently showing a drawdown against grants of £18.284m. The details are set out by directorate in Section B.

Full disclosure of our revenue savings targets and latest forecast of delivery was included in in Appendix A

It was worth noting that we were now reporting £8.016m of savings delivered with a further £3.416m nearing delivery – a total of £11.432m or 83% of the target.

At the quarterly position in the year, the Capital Programme haD been updated to reflect newly-approved schemes.

The five-year capital budget 2021-2026 was currently forecasted at £688.366m as at 31 December. The capital budget had been adjusted to take into account the addition of newly-approved schemes and to adjust the future funding assumptions shown in table 1 in the report

During the last quarter, we had added 2 major schemes. Derriford Business Park at £17.9m and the equally important Woolwell to the George scheme at £33.5m.

This report will proceed to Full Council to note the revenue position and approve the revised capital position.

Cabinet agreed to –

1. Note the current revenue monitoring position;

2. Approve the virements as shown in Section C to Full Council and

3. Approve the revision of the Capital Budget 2021-2026 to £688.366 (as shown in Section D Table 1) to Full Council 28 February 2022