The Service Director, Finance will give a presentation in respect of the Corporate Financial Monitoring Report – Quarter 3 and the Annual Budget Report 2024-25.
Contact: Isabel Brittain, Service Director, Finance
Minutes:
The Service Director - Finance, Isabel Brittain, submitted the Corporate Financial Monitoring Report – Quarter 3 and the Annual Budget Report 2024-25.
Councillor Turner, Cabinet Member for Finance and Regeneration, introduced the item explaining that the Council’s financial situation had improved significantly and the predicted overspend by the end of the financial year had been reduced due to the savings achieved.
The following points were highlighted in the presentation:
· The Budget Report would be presented to full Council on 6th March.
· It had been a challenging year but a balanced budget had been produced.
· The budget included significant new savings which equated to £34 million.
· There had been a contribution to reserves from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
· There had been an improvement in the position at the end of Quarter 3, with an overspend of £9.9 million pounds compared with £16 million in the previous period. This had been achieved through undertaking a number of central budget challenges including reducing the costs of capital financing and service expenditure from reduction of non-essential spend.
· There were still a number of pressures, particularly in Children and Families, Adults and Health and Growth and Regeneration.
· Further work would be undertaken with the aim of achieving an outturn position with a further reduced overspend.
Questions and comments were invited from Committee Members, with the following issues being covered:
· Detail in respect of the pressures on Children and Families, and Adults and Health services and the mitigations, which included:
- Work to provide integration support across all elements of Children Services
- Reviewing the careers contract for the Kirklees and Calderdale joint partnership.
- Reviewing the mental health offer to families
- A re-design of youth work within Children and Families.
- A significant project to review the delivery of adult services, across a number of areas of work, to ensure that financial costs were relevant and realistic and achieved best value. This might include review of the direct payment policy, community based integrated library redesign, older people and physical disability services redesign and cultural fees and charges.
· In response to a question in respect of the approach and opportunities for income generation in the future, it was acknowledged that additional income streams could be investigated further but a cautious approach should be taken to ensure that there would be no financial risk to the taxpayer.
· It was suggested that consideration could be given to the establishment of a vehicle to deliver direct services to residents, or the use of Municipal Climate Bonds, which had been adopted by a number of other Councils; such initiatives being considered to be of lower risk.
· The aim was to reduce the projected £9.9 million further by the end of the financial year and there were some opportunities to achieve this. If the overspend was reduced this would retain more money in reserves and place the Council in a more resilient position for the future.
· It was acknowledged that spend in Quarter 1 of the new municipal year may be higher, due to deferred spending, but this was a normal occurrence and would be balanced out over the remainder of the year. In addition, a number of service re-designs would be implemented and essential spend only would continue.
· Capitalisation was currently only used for transformation projects, apart from the general Capital Programme. There was a consultation ongoing in respect of proposals to allow Councils in significant financial difficulty to capitalise some revenue overspend in the future. Kirklees was not considering this at the present time and would continue to capitalise revenue in accordance with Government guidelines.
· A report was to be submitted to Council on the 6th March, alongside the budget documents, in respect of the new powers available to local authorities, as legislated for in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, in relation to long-term empty properties and second homes. The relevant exemptions would be confirmed by the Government in due course. These new powers were welcomed and it was hoped that they would have a similar effect to the previous initiative, in terms of properties being returned to the market.
· It was clarified that authority would be delegated to the Council’s Section 151 Officer, in conjunction with the Portfolio Holder, to enable the policy to be amended once the final detail was confirmed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Changes to the strategy would need to be referred to Cabinet and Council.
Thanks were expressed to the Cabinet Member for Finance and Regeneration and the Service Director – Finance for the report.