Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Growth and Investment introduced a report on the Council’s capital and revenue position for the 2016/17 financial year, as at 31 December 2016.

The General Fund showed a projected end of year spend of £154.8m against the approved budget of £150.3m, which represented an improvement of approximately £0.5m on the previous month’s position.  The main budget pressures continued to be within the Children’s Social Care and Homelessness services and the Cabinet Member commented that a new phase of Government welfare system changes would affect even more working families and lead to a likely increase in Homelessness applications.

The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) showed a projected year end underspend which would result in a contribution of £1.92m to the HRA reserve.  Expenditure on the wide range of school, housing and other infrastructure projects within the Capital Programme was forecast to be slightly above budget at £199.335m.

The Cabinet resolved to:

(i)  Note the projected outturn position for 2016/17 of the Council’s General Fund revenue budget at 31 December 2016, as detailed in section 4 and Appendix A to the report;

(ii)  Note the overall position for the Housing Revenue Account at 31 December 2016, as detailed in section 5 of the report;

(iii)  Note the progress made on budgeted savings to date, as detailed in section 6 and Appendix B to the report; and

(iv)  Note the projected outturn position for 2016/17 of the Council’s capital budget as at 31 December, as detailed in section 7 and Appendix C to the report.