Issue - meetings

This report presents the Capital Monitoring position at Quarter 3 for the current financial year 2024/25.

The Committee received a report presenting the Capital Monitoring position at Quarter 3 for the current financial year 2024/25.

The following matters were considered:

a)            Disabled Facilities Grant. A Member of the Committee asked why disabled facilities grants are put in with the capital programme, as it isn’t the most reflective way of showing how much money the Council has available. The Director of Corporate Services (S151) responded to explain that the table set out in paragraph 4.1 shows the financing of the capital programme, the total of £6.9m has the £1.7m disabled facilities grant in there, and the other sources are broken down in the table as well. The Director of Corporate Services (S151) offered to show the financing of the capital programme both with and without DFG in the future. The Director of Corporate Services (S151) explained that page 15 shows details of what we’ve got against and what we’ve spent of the DFG. There is £1.7m approved budget. The Council has spent, up to the end of quarter three, just over £1m, and is forecasting for the year end as a whole to spend £1.4m, meaning there is £300,000 to be carried forward to be spent on DFG expenditure in the next financial year.

b)            Deficit. A Member of the Committee raised that the five-year programme shows a rolling deficit when you take out DFG. The Member asked for clarification as to how that deficit will be funded. The Member highlighted that the capital programme has a running deficit that is propped up on the budget sheet by DFG. The Director of Corporate Services (S151) clarified that for the quarter three report, the finance team have split out the funding sources. The Director of Corporate Services (S151) noted that the 25/26 Budget will go to Full Council next week, and that the projects are fully funded.  The Director of Corporate Services (S151) explained that it isn’t just the capital budget where the Council will a forecast deficit for 26/27, and informed the Committee that this is partly due to the fact that we forecast for the worst case and then hope that additional income comes and then this will be considered during budget setting for 26/27.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)      Receive the Capital Monitoring position at Quarter 3, as set out in the report:

(2)      Note the progress of Capital projects as set out in Appendix 1.