Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Executive.

Cllr Pauline Church, Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement, Commissioning, IT, Digital and Commercialisation presented the report which provided detail about the final year end position for financial year 2020/21 (31 March 2021) for revenue and capital.

Statements and questions were submitted by Sue McGill.  The Leader acknowledged that the questions had received written responses which had been published on the Council’s website prior to the meeting. There was no supplementary question.

Cllr Church explained that the figures detailed in the report included the final position for the Collection Fund and section 31 (s31) grant funding for Business Rates and an update on the Income Loss Compensation Scheme since the provisional position was reported to Cabinet on 1 June 2021. It was noted that this position allowed for the setting aside of a net additional £2.711m to earmarked reserves and £34.124m of s31 grant provided to the council to ensure no significant cashflow issues arose during the year following the additional reliefs that were given to support businesses net of a small adverse variance on the Business Rates levy into a specific earmarked reserve to fund the accounting deficit on the Collection Fund.

In addition, the report set out the year end position of the Capital Programme, the movements from the original budget set at the beginning of 2020/21 and sets out how the programme has been financed. It provides an update on the significant programmes that have been delivered and those that have been reprofiled to future years.

Cllr Laura Mayes, Deputy Leader and Cabinet member for Children’s Services, Education and Skills, thanked the Education and Skills Team for the work undertaken to complete large planned maintenance projects despite the COVID-19 restrictions. In addition, the Team undertook 83 reactive and emergency works at schools during this time.

Cllr Pip Ridout, Chair of the Financial Planning Task Group, confirmed that the report had been considered by the Task Group at its meetings on 25 June 2021 and 7 July 2021. The Task Group were content with the responses received to questions asked and they would consider any issues surrounding Capital items at future meetings.

In response to questions from Cllr Ian Thorn about (i) Business rates deficit; (ii) Capital expenditure programme slippage; (iii) Delivery of the Campus programme; and (iv) Lackham College land purchase; Cllr Church, the Leader  and the Corporate Director Resources and Deputy Chief Executive (Section 151 Officer) confirmed (i) that this was technical accounting and the deficit was compensated for by s31 grants received from the Government for 2020/21 and 2021/22, although the long term deficit was unknown at this stage; (ii) The frequency of reprofiling capital schemes was increasing and therefore, approved schemes were receiving increased focus in relation to their deliverability within the approved timescales.  It was confirmed that Overview and Scrutiny would become involved in this process going forward; (iii) the Council’s commitment to the delivery of the Trowbridge Campus project. There was no commitment at this stage for other  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28