Cabinet considered the latest Financial Update report.

The Leader of the Council and Chairman of Cabinet, Business, Economic Development and Property informed that the tough budget set by the administration would, had it not been for Covid-19, been paying dividends and stabilising the budget.  It was clear that we would have been in a better financial position with an underspend, it was a difficult, tough but necessary budget that due to the pandemic has changed.

The Lead Member for Finance and Ascot informed that the report set out the financial position of the Council at the end of month 4, July and read out the recommendations.

He said that when setting this year’s budget, they were very robust in checking all budget lines and savings so it was no surprise that the underlying budget was holding up well and, pleasingly since June reserves had increased by £900K to £2.7M.  But for COVID they were managing services within budget with a reported pre-covid favourable variance of £2.8M which would have increased reserves to nearly £9M.  But due to the pandemic a major issue was the loss of revenue in Parking, Leisure and commercial property amounting to £8.2M.

The Government had published Guidance on the recovery of lost income. This excluded commercial property and is on the basis of 75% of 95% of the loss where the losses were associated with fees and charges but there was some dispensation around leisure.

Finance was working to establish exactly what they can claim. This was not straightforward as any actions the Council had taken to mitigate costs cannot be claimed. All funds received will be added to general reserves.

The Lead Member provided some revenue budget headlines:

·         A positive was the green waste take up had increased.

·         The Adult Social Care budget, with a multitude of moving parts, reported a favourable variance of £1.3M.

·         Children’s services report an unfavourable variance of £1.27M in part because savings in Transforming youth and early years services had been delayed by Covid and they also had an additional high cost placement.

·         Given the Covid crisis Council Tax and Business rate collection, which accounts for £88M of our revenues, were holding up well. Council tax was 0.48% behind target and Business rates were 1.7% ahead of target.

·         The increased burden of managing business rate grant awards impacted on the Revenue and Benefits team’s ability to meet Housing benefit response time targets. But the average time to process new Housing Benefit claims and change events were 5.7 and 2.9 days respectively, well below target and as low as they have ever been. He thanked the team.

·         Planning were seeing signs of increased activity which he hoped was a lead indicator for economic growth.

·         Borrowing was largely unchanged.

With regards to Capital the Lead Member informed that:

·         There was one fully funded addition to the capital programme to resolve a safeguarding issue Larchfield School.

·         In appendix F on page 76 members were now able to easily track movements in the capital programme.

·         On Page 81 a draft timetable for the 2021/22 budget build had been included.

He informed that the report was due to be considered by the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Panel. The Leader informed that the draft budget would go to Cabinet in December to allow consultation prior to Council in the new year.

The Deputy Leader of the Council, Resident and Leisure Services, HR, IT, Legal, Performance Management and Windsor thanked the revenue and benefits team as they had administered £39.3 million worth of new business rate relief and £28 million of grants to businesses that had been funded by Government. 

The Head of Finance informed that we would be making three returns to Government for lost revenue the first claim was expected to be about £2 million this was for the loss incurred for the first third of the year.  It was expected that the total claimed for the year would be about £3 to £4 million.  

Resolved unanimously:  that  Cabinet notes thre report and:

i)     Notes the Council’s projected revenue & capital position for 2020/21.

ii)    Notes the budget movements;

iii)   Approves the capital variances and slippage.

iv)   Approves a capital budget addition of £110,000  for Safeguarding works at Larchfield Primary School