Issue - meetings

This report presents the forecast revenue outturn position for the current financial year 2024/25, as at Quarter 1 (30 June).

The Committee received a report presenting the forecast revenue outturn position for the current financial year 2024/25, as of Quarter 1 (30 June).

The following matters were considered:

a)             Report correction. The Chief Accountant corrected an error in Section 7 of the report, the figure of £1.25m in paragraph 7.1 should show £356,000 as detailed in the accompanying table.

b)             Homeless variance. A Member of the Committee asked what targets are being missed to cause such a high forecast variance. The Chief Finance Officer responded to explain that the main issue is elevated demand for homelessness support and detailed actions to deal with the issue are within the remit of Community and Wellbeing Committee. The Chair noted the query and informed the Member that a written response would be provided following the meeting.

c)             General Fund Reserves. A Member of the Committee asked for a brief overview as to the decrease of the reserves balance. The Chief Finance Officer responded to explain that a report was taken to the Financial Strategy Advisory Group in June 2024, that detailed all commitments, over a certain level, against reserves, which is publicly available. The Chief Finance Officer continued to explain that a number of the larger commitments from reserves relate to the Local Plan or the acquisition of a residential property, that has been done to help the homelessness issue. The Chief Finance Officer informed the Committee that the capital reserves are diminishing and to mitigate that, an annual contribution of £500k has been put into the revenue budget.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)       Receive the revenue budget monitoring report, which sets-out a projected deficit of £77,000 for 2024/25;

(2)       Agree that regular reports should continue to be prepared for Community & Wellbeing Committee to update members on progress against the Homelessness Strategy and Action Plan;

(3)       Agree that the updated Quarter 2 position will be reported back to Audit and Scrutiny Committee in November.