Decision details

Cabinet received a report on the forecast Revenue and Capital outturn position for Buckinghamshire Council for the financial year 2023/24 as at Quarter 3.  The Council continued to experience significant financial pressures due to continued increase in demand and complexity of need in key services, such as Adults Social Care and Children’s Social Care. The forecast revenue outturn position at Quarter 3 was an adverse variance of £4.5m, (1% of Portfolio budgets), a reduction of £4.1m from the Quarter 2 reported position of £8.6m. The adverse variance remained primarily due to pressures in Health and Wellbeing and Education and Children’s Services from demand and market insufficiency issues, coupled with pressures in Housing and Homelessness & Regulatory Services in Temporary Accommodation budgets and Transport budgets.

At Quarter 1, an adverse variance of £8.3m had been reported, and action plans were formulated in order to contain pressures as much as possible. The Quarter 2 budget monitoring report provided an update on these measures and reflected positive movements across several Portfolios linked to the delivery of action plans. The overall forecast at Quarter 2 deteriorated due to increasing pressures within Education and Children’s Services. Between Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 the Council had additionally developed enhanced spending and vacancy controls to further contain the overall budget pressure and these were detailed in the main report.

Within the overall position there was an adverse variance of £13.6m (3%) in Portfolios (£15.2m last quarter) offset by a £9.1m (£6.6m last quarter) favourable variance in Corporate & Funding.  The Capital Programme had been updated for proposed Quarter 3 Budget Adjustments, subject to Cabinet approval. Capital spending was forecast to be 99.0% of the updated budget, a variance of (£1.2m). Figure 5 in the report showed the summary Capital Budgets by portfolio and Appendix 2 was a breakdown of the programme in detail. Spend to date was £66.9m (56.3% of budget). There were five key projects with £14.7m of budget as yet unspent, where the majority of the budget was expected to be spent in the final quarter. These were outlined in Section 4.2 of the Cabinet report.

RESOLVED –

(1)               That Cabinet note the report and risks and opportunities within it.

(2)               That Cabinet note the actions being taken to mitigate pressures as set out in paragraph 1.3 of the Cabinet report.