To consider the Cabinet report.

The Head of Finance / Deputy Director Corporate & Community Services introduced the report that provided an update to Cabinet on the Council’s financial performance in 2016-17.

Services were currently projecting a £145k under spend. An additional £75k under spend was reported on non-service budget lines. There was therefore an

overall under spend of £220k on the General Fund.

The Panel were informed that the Council remained in a strong financial position with healthy reserves. The Council’s Development Fund currently had a balance of £1.104m. Overall our combined General Fund Reserves sit at £6.278m in excess of the £5.27m recommended minimum level set at Council in February 2016.

The Chairman noted that under Corporate and Community Services the report mentioned the loss of commercial rent income was anticipated with two units of Waldeck House being let to charities and four units in use by the Council for storage.  The Chairman asked for an update to be sent to the Panel on what charities let the properties.

The Chairman also asked for information to be circulated on what the funds being allocated on Forest Bridge School were for, as this was a free school.

The Chairman also raised concern that the budget for Early Help & Safeguarding continued to be under pressure and questioned if sufficient budget gets allocated each year and if there should be some built-in contingency fund for the challenging area so requests for additional budget did not have to be repeatedly made to Cabinet.

Cllr Carroll asked for clarification on the two classifications for the reserves and was informed that there was usable reserves and unusable reserves; the useable reserves  could be used to support council services such as the General Fund  whilst unusable funds (such as Schools Balances) were restricted to specific areas.

Cllr Jones mentioned that at the last Panel meeting it was requested that a Part II section be added to the report detailing known liabilities and risks; such a section had not been added.

Cllr Burbage questioned where the £455k balancing the Development Fund had come from and was informed that this was due to the receipt of the Transition Grant given by Government for the significant level of reduction in funding received for the 2016/17 financial settlement

Cllr Dr Evans suggested that the report would benefit from an additional column being added to show what the actual spend was to date.

Cllr Burbage mentioned that he had previously questioned how effective the authorities budget setting process was as there seemed to be a lot of amendments throughout the year.  The Panel noted that where there were in year changes they would be reported in this update report.  

Resolved unanimously: that the Corporate Services O&S Panel considered the report and fully endorsed the recommendations to Cabinet.  It was recommended that as a new Head of Finance/Deputy Director Corporate & Community Services had been appointed that this was a good opportunity to review the report to make it clearer.  The Chairman suggested that it would have been useful to have the report printed in colour with negative figures in red to make it clear.

After the meeting the following update was emailed to Panel Members:

At the last meeting of the Corporate Services O&S Panel Members asked for clarification on a couple of issues during discussing the Financial Update report, I have been provided with the following information:

• For the units let at Waldeck House who were the two charities?
  • Unit 3b – Maidenhead Drama Guild
  • Unit 13a – Maidenhead Cycling Hub

• Why was the Council passing over funding to the Forest Green School?
  • Forest Bridge school was looking for a new location. A potential site was at Berkshire College of Agriculture. The council has agreed to share the risk with the EFA by match funding £100,000 for a planning application. Other potential sites are under consideration including Braywick Park, therefore the money is not yet being spent. The school is unable to take any more pupils after September 2016.