Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance

To note the report and:

i)               note the forecast revenue outturn for the year is an overspend on services of £8.009m which reduces to an overspend of £4.347m when including unallocated contingency budgets and changes to funding budgets (para 5);

ii)              note the forecast capital outturn is expenditure of £43.960m against a budget of £88.267m (para 11).

Cabinet noted the report and:

i)               noted the forecast revenue outturn for the year was an overspend on services of £8.009m which reduced to an overspend of £4.347m when including unallocated contingency budgets and changes to funding budgets (para 5);

ii)             noted the forecast capital outturn was expenditure of £43.960m against a budget of £88.267m (para 11).

Councillor Jones, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance said that in September 2023, senior officers had warned the Cabinet that the borough was at significant risk of issuing a Section 114 notice. Since then, despite being successful in making savings, the total forecasted overspend for the end of the financial year 2023/24, now sat at approximately £8m. Once contingencies were applied, this would reduce to £4.35m. In month 7, an increased demand was seen in statutory services such as adult services, which saw an increased overspend of £0.700m, which now led to a total overspend of £6.36m. Children’s Services had also seen an overspend of £0.580m, due to an increase in placements.

Councillor Jones said that the place directorate had reduced its overspend by £0.800m, which showed that the Council was moving in a good direction when it came to services that it could control and that are not demand driven. It had been reported that around 40 MPs had written to Central Government to provide additional finances to ensure that it could continue to provide essential services and balance its budget. An extra allocation of £500m to assist in covering increases in adult social care costs, which Councillor Jones welcomed, however believed that it was not enough to cover the increased demand.

Councillor Jones then stated that although a balanced budget for 2024/25 had been achieved, all be it with some very difficult and unpleasant decisions, with the current level of overspend as a result of the previous administration’s budget, the Council were entering the new financial year with minimal reserves. There was therefore a continued risk of issuing a Section 114 notice.

Councillor Hill, Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, Customer Service Centre and Employment, asked what impact on RBWM specifically had been made by the 30% reduction in Government grants and also the limiting of Council tax rises by Central Government to just 2.99% per annum. Councillor Jones replied by saying that the borough had seen 6 years of continuous Council tax cuts, this reduced the amount that could be spent on residents. The borough had around £0.0015m per dwelling per year that it could spend, which compared to Reading’s £0.0019m. The boroughs spend per dwelling was in the bottom 1% of all local authorities.

Councillor Tisi, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Windsor, wished to comment on Children’s Services specifically and said that it was important to focus on demand driven services, such as this service and that children and young people were not just numbers and that safeguarding them was vitally important. Lin Ferguson, Executive Director of Children’s Services and Education, said that it was the borough’s statutory duty to ensure that children and young people were safeguarded and protected. Since October 2023, 11 children and young persons had come into the care of the borough; 6 of these were in police protection due to concerns over safety;  3 were asylum seekers and 2 were beyond parental control.

Lin Ferguson  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6