Issue - meetings

Revenue Budget Monitoring - Quarter 3

Meeting: 03/02/2022 - Audit and Scrutiny Committee (Item 33)

33 Revenue Budget Monitoring - Quarter 3 pdf icon PDF 566 KB

This report presents the forecast revenue outturn position for the current financial year 2021/22, as at Quarter 3 (31 December).

Minutes:

The Committee received a report presenting the forecast revenue outturn position for the current financial year 2021/22, as at Quarter 3 (31 December).

The following matters were considered:

·                     Budget for planning appeals. Following a question from a Member, the Head of Finance informed the Committee that the planning appeal budget allocation agreed by the Strategy and Resources Committee at its meeting on 27 January 2022 would be implemented through the Council’s budget virement policies.

·                     Financial recovery from Covid-19. Following a question from a Member, the Head of Finance informed the Committee that a £600,000 contingency for the impact of Covid-19 was budgeted for 2022-23 and that strategy for managing the permanent impact of Covid-19 would be developed in advance of the budget setting process for 2023-24.

·                     Organisation restructure. Following a question from a Member, the Head of Finance informed the Committee that the organisational restructure undertaken in 2021 was costed to be budget neutral. The Chair provided the Committee with an update on the number of current staff vacancies.

·                     Pension contributions. Following a question from a Member, the Head of Finance informed the Committee of the processes followed by the Council to validate the cost of ‘compensatory added years’. This included checking the names of claimants against historic records and challenging the pension administrator on the controls it had in place.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)      Receive the revenue budget monitoring report, which projects a £2.38m budget deficit for 2021/22, along with provisional funding for the deficit;

(2)      Note that the provisional outturn position will be reported back to this Committee in July.