Agenda item

Report attached.

The Cabinet considered a report of Councillor Peter Britcliffe, Deputy Leader of the Council and Portfolio Holder for Resources, which informed Members of the draft financial spending of the Council up to the end of the financial year in March 2023.

Councillor Britcliffe highlighted some key points within the report

Councillor Munsif Dad BEM JP expressed confidence in the Executive Director (Resources) and thanked officers for their work in managing the budget.  Councillor Zak Khan noted that the capital works to provide energy efficiencies had shown a good degree of foresight and further work would now be progressed.  Councillor Aziz commented that the Haworth Art Gallery remained a stunning venue, but that its potential for income generation through weddings, etc. was potentially under-utilised and needed further promotion.

Approval of the report was not deemed a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

Full financial details were provided in two tables set out as Appendices to the report.

The initial draft forecast year end position for the financial year 2022/23 was a total spend of £11,989,433 against a Budget of £12,334,453.  This gave a revenue underspend of £345,020 compared to the Budget set at the start of the year.  Further analysis of these changes were shown in section 4 and Appendix A of the report.

Appendix A included a breakdown of the Forecast Outturn Variances between staffing costs, non-staffing costs and income.  Some service areas showed large variances in the breakdown figures where grant funding had been received and subsequently used to fund expenditure but budgets were not in place because the amounts were not known in advance.  In these instances, although the breakdown figures might be large, they offset each other and the overall variance was much lower, or even nil.  The largest instance of this was in the Customer Contact section under Policy & Corporate Governance.  The breakdown of variances showed £5.488m for non-staffing costs and £5.742m for income but £5.4m of both these figures related to the Council Tax Energy Rebates scheme.  Other instances where the breakdown figures were skewed in this way were:

• Environmental Services – UK Shared Prosperity Funding
• Culture & Leisure – Leisure
• Planning & Transportation – Section 106
• Regeneration & Housing – Housing Advice and Selective Licensing

The revenue underspend in year was an increase since the figure of £128,906 reported at Period 10 and was an increase of £216,114.  Further analysis of these changes were shown in section 5 and Appendix B of the report.

During 2022/2023 the Council had experienced some significant budget pressures that included an increased, nationally-awarded pay award for staff that averaged 4.6% above the original budgeted inflation figure of 2% and increases in energy and supply costs as an impact from the War in Ukraine.  All of these costs had been maintained within the overall budget set for the year and had been offset by increased investment income and other good budget management processes.

Not all work on producing the Final Accounts had been completed as yet and the Accounts were still subject to External Audit, so the surplus figure of £345,020 was a draft at this stage.

Forecast Variance by Service

The forecast underspend by service was as summarised below, with the variances including the budget pressures and additional investment income as mentioned above.

Forecast Underspend Movements since last Reported

The increase in underspend from period 10 was summarised below:

A further report would be provided once all the work is completed if there was any significant change to the position reported here

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                    -    Cabinet notes the progress of spend against the Revenue Budget for 2022/2023.