Issue - meetings

Report of the Cabinet Member Finance and Community Development

RESOLVED that

1.      The contents of the report including the key projected variances to the revised 2010/11 budget and the projected total budget saving of £74,300 be noted.

2.      Cabinet’s intention to recommend to Council, as part of the 2010/11 outturn report to Council on the 27 June 2011, that part of the projected budget saving be used to fund an interim solution relating to the Bath Road toilets be noted.

3.      The use of £17,000 of the net underspend on new green waste schemes to fund the bringing forward of the full rollout of plastic bottles collection across the borough in 2011/12 be approved under the financial rules 4G, part 8.11.

The Cabinet Member Finance and Community Development introduced the report as circulated with the agenda.  The report set out the council’s current financial position for 2010/11 based on the monitoring exercise at the end of February 2011 and included revenue, capital, treasury management and the housing revenue account.  The report also identified known variations to the 2010/11 revised budget and a position statement on major schemes. 

He highlighted the good news in the report in that through its decisive action, the council had reduced a projected £800,000 overspend to a £74,000 underspend and this was a considerable achievement. He also highlighted that Green Waste was performing better than expected and the deficit in car parking income due to severe weather and the general trading situation. He was pleased to announce Cabinet’s intention to support an interim solution to the Bath Road toilets and to bring forward funding for the full roll-out of plastic bottles collection across the borough. Both of these initiatives would be included in base budgets next year.

He referred to the Icelandic Bank situation set out in paragraph 3 and finally congratulated the finance and benefit departments for their achievements on business rate and council tax collection set out in appendix 2.

The Chief Finance Officer acknowledge the major achievement in turning around the budget situation but added a word of caution in that there was still a huge amount of work to do around close down before the final position could be confirmed.

The Cabinet thanked officers for their work and for their enterprise and ingenuity in reducing the budget gap. The Leader acknowledged that although the recruitment freeze had been successful he was aware that it had not been without some pain for the staff involved. 

RESOLVED that

1.      The contents of the report including the key projected variances to the revised 2010/11 budget and the projected total budget saving of £74,300 be noted.

2.      Cabinet’s intention to recommend to Council, as part of the 2010/11 outturn report to Council on the 27 June 2011, that part of the projected budget saving be used to fund an interim solution relating to the Bath Road toilets be noted.

3.      The use of £17,000 of the net underspend on new green waste schemes to fund the bringing forward of the full rollout of plastic bottles collection across the borough in 2011/12 be approved under the financial rules 4G, part 8.11.