Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member Finance and Assets

The Cabinet Member Finance and Assets introduced the report, which covered the financial outturn from the budget approved in February 2021, and would go on to Council on 18^th July. The outturn position as of 31^st March 2022 reported an underspend of £229,116 against the revised budget. He acknowledged the current cost of living emergency, which paragraphs 2.5 and 2.6 made reference to. £60k of the underspend had been set aside to support Cheltenham’s Food Network, with the remainder moved to general balances. During increasingly unpredictable economic and political times, they needed to focus on staff delivering core services and the four key priorities of Cyber Central, their £180m housing investment program, Net Zero Cheltenham and No Child Left Behind.

The Cabinet Member Safety and Communities highlighted the positive impact of the council’s investment program, in particular the delivery of 2,000 food parcels to vulnerable families. In addition to this, she had recently spoken to a young person who wanted to get involved in finance but did not have access to the pathway to do so. She was delighted that the Executive Director Finance, Assets and Regeneration had invited them to do work experience, an invaluable opportunity that may well lead to a career in finance in the future.

The Leader moved to the vote, where it was unanimously:

RESOLVED THAT:

Council be recommended to:

1.    Receive the financial outturn performance position for the General Fund, summarised at Appendix 2, and note that in delivering services in 2021/22, there was an underspend of £229,116 against the budget approved by Council on 21 February 2021;

2.    Note £656,218 of carry forward approved by the Section 151 Officer under delegated powers at Appendix 5 and approves £48,500 of carry forward which require Member approval;

3.    Approve the proposal for the use of the underspend after the carry forward requests outlined in Section 3 of this report and delegate authority to the Executive Director of Finance and Assets in consultation with the Lead Member for Finance and Assets to ensure the underspend is used in line with this proposal in Section 2.8;

4.    Note the annual treasury management report at Appendix 7 and note the actual 2021/22 prudential and treasury indicators;

5.    Note the capital programme outturn position as detailed in Section 6 and Appendix 8, approve the carry forward of unspent budgets into 2022/23 and the inclusion of two new projects in the 2022/23 capital programme with a funding commitment of £50k;

6.    Note the year end position in respect of Section 106 and CIL agreements and partnership funding agreements at Appendix 9;

7.    Note the outturn position in respect of collection rates for council tax and non-domestic rates for 2021/22 in Appendix 10;

8.    Receive the financial outturn performance position for the Housing Revenue Account for 2021/22 in Appendix 11 and approve the carry forward of capital budgets in 2022/23 as set out in Appendix 12.