Meeting documents

1.    Cabinet is asked to note the Quarter 3 outturn forecast for revenue and capital budgets and discuss areas of concern.

Mr Tett, Leader introduced the 2018/19 Q3 Financial Position report.  Mr Tett stated that there was still a firm objective to come in on budget.

Mr Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources highlighted the following points:

Revenue

• At the end of Q3 the revenue position was a slight overspend of £120k, which had been an improvement of Q2 overspend of £200k and reflected the successful budget and financial management improvement programme.
• The portfolios with the largest overspend were Children’s Social Care £4.9m, Education £1.9m and Health and Wellbeing £1.4m.
• There was a forecast underspend in the Planning and Environment portfolio of £1.5m
• Overall portfolio position was a net overspend of £7.1m but this was offset by corporate underspends of £7m which related to unused provisions and contingencies and Treasury Management savings.  This gave a net forecast of £120k.

Capital

• There was a net forecast capital slippage for the year of £15.9m.  Main components of this figure were in the Leaders portfolio, the Local Enterprise funded schemes where the County Council were the accountable body and in Resources, in particular relating to the Aylesbury Study Centre (put on hold awaiting unitary developments) and funding for technology projects that had been put on hold pending the approval of the new Technology Strategy.

• There had been accelerated spend on school building projects in Education Capital portfolio.
• Outstanding debt had reduced from £18m to £10m since the task and finish group had been set up.

Cabinet highlighted the following points within their portfolio areas:

• Mr Appleyard confirmed that those who do not qualify for free transport largely covered the cost of providing the service and that there was an aim to make the fare totally cover the costs.
• Mr Tett highlighted the particular pressures in children’s social care and health and wellbeing and the corporate contingencies that have helped to mitigate these.
• Mr Whyte highlighted the hard work of social work management teams around the looked after children population and that the numbers had steadied over the last few months which had helped. He acknowledged that it was always hard to calculate unexpected spends coming into the service and this would present budget challenges.  Mr Whyte highlighted they were still progressing with the children’s homes project and were still looking for additional locations in the south of the County, which not only provided a cost benefit but a benefit to the children being able to keep them in county.
• Lin Hazell highlighted pressures within Health and Wellbeing included increased service users, increased residential nursing and self-funders exhausting their own funds which then have to be funded by the County Council.  Lin Hazell also highlighted that there were an increased number of cases that had more complex needs resulting in additional support required.
• Mr Tett highlighted that the slippage in the Capital programme relating to the LEP was monies held by the County Council for capital programmes commissioned for other parties, the spend of which was out of the County Council’s control.  Mr Ambrose confirmed that if you took the LEP slippage out of the equation and other projects that had deliberately been put on hold, overall slippage was reduced to approximately £5m and in context was relatively low.

The report set out the following recommendation:

1. Cabinet were asked to note the Quarter 3 outturn forecast for revenue and capital budgets and discuss areas of concern.

RESOLVED: Cabinet NOTED the Quarter 3 outturn forecast for revenue and capital budgets and discussed areas of concern.