Meeting documents

To consider Item 7

The Lead Member for Finance, IT and Procurement introduced the report and advised Members that it set out the Authority’s revenue and capital outturn position and debt management performance to 31 March 2018. The provisional outturn figure for the year was a net underspend of £95k. This represented a 0.3% variance against the budget. There was an Overview and Audit Committee meeting on the 18 July 2018 to sign off the accounts and it was not expected that any changes would be made.

The Lead Member for Finance, IT and Procurement advised Members that they would now be given a briefing regarding pay awards.

The Chief Fire Officer advised Members that there had been recent meetings, held by the National Joint Council (NJC) regarding firefighter pay. He and the Chairman had attended one held last Friday (6 July 2018). The purpose of the meeting was for the NJC to gauge the employers’ feelings about future pay awards. Currently, this Authority was tied to a 1% pay cap which was agreed within the efficiency plan requested by government. The pay award would include all staff (uniformed and non-uniformed), but had not yet been agreed nationally.

The Director of Finance and Assets gave Members a briefing of what the Authority’s current medium term forecast assumption would look like if the pay award was agreed at 2%. The cost of a 2% increase to this Authority would equate to approximately £183k per year. For the current year the Authority could use reserves to fund the pay increase. In terms of planning, this Authority was quite prudent, but if there were 2% pay awards for the next three years, at the end of 2020/21 there would be a shortfall of £1.2M.

The Chief Fire Officer advised Members that the Authority had been campaigning for precept flexibility for a number of years and advised that the Authority could cope with the pay increase but this would stretch the organisation and changes on how it operated would need to be made going forward.

The Chairman advised Members that the Authority would continue to lobby for precept flexibility which would make the Authority’s position far more tenable and would lessen the numbers of unpleasant, unpalatable decisions it might otherwise be forced to consider. The fire precept was lower than the average parish council precept in Buckinghamshire.

RESOLVED –

1.            That the provisional outturn forecast for the Authority as at 31 March 2018 be noted.

2.            That the slippage of £11,659k on the capital programme is approved to be carried forward into 2018/19.

3.            That delegated authority be given to the Chief Finance Officer in consultation with the Lead Member for Finance to authorise any late changes to the movements in reserves and capital slippage amounts resulting from accounting adjustments needing to be made during the year-end closedown process.

4.            That should any changes to be amounts be referred to above be required, then the Chief Finance Officer will report these to Members at the next available meeting.