Agenda item

Report attached.

Members considered a joint report of Councillor Noordad Aziz, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Transformation, Education and Skills, and Councillor Vanessa Alexander, Portfolio Holder for Resources and Council Operations, updating Cabinet on the Council’s Capital Programme and setting out the outturn position for 2023/24, including variations to the budgets from those reported to Cabinet in January 2024.

Councillor Aziz provided a brief introduction to the main points within the report.

Approval of the report was not considered to be a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

The Council had authorised new additions to the capital programme of £8.374m at its meeting on the 23^rd February 2023.

Since the Council meeting in February 2023 new schemes totalling £9.268m had been approved and added to the programme.  The additional expenditure approved was fully funded by external grants and receipts that had been awarded and / or received.

In addition, the capital spend outturn from 2022/2023 had slipped £37.615m into 2023/2024, of which £35.294m related to the Levelling Up scheme for Accrington Town Centre, the Leisure Estate Investment and Housing Schemes including Disabled Facilities Grants.

The full approved Capital programme totalled £49.757m and is shown in the table set out below:

The full programme of £49.757m was not capable of being delivered in the current financial year and uncompleted elements had now been slipped into the future years in which it was expected to be spent.

Outturn Position

The Actual expenditure to 31^st March 2024 was £9.034m against the latest rephased budget for 2023/2024 of £9.102m.  This equated to 99.25% spend.

A further table was provided in the report which showed that £40.655m of budget had been rephased into 2024/2025, of which £26.024m related to the Levelling Up scheme for Accrington Town Centre, £11.084m to the Leisure Estate Investment, £0.846m to Shared Prosperity Funded schemes, £0.661 to Disabled Facility Grants and the balance to miscellaneous capital schemes.

Following the rephasing of the programme budgets, the outturn showed a small underspend in 2023/24 of £68,329 with all other schemes in line with the budgeted profile and spent in year.

The significant elements of the programme spent in year were outlined in the aforementioned table with a more detailed breakdown shown in Appendix A to the report.

The overall net position was that the Capital Programme at period 9 was forecasting a total spend of £10.908m and the actual outturn of £9.034m was a reduction of £1.874m, which was largely due to additional slippage on the Levelling Up Fund projects which was ongoing into 2024/25.  Also, works on the Leisure Estate Investment Programme had moved faster than had been forecast at period 9.

The £9.034m outturn had been financed largely by the use of external grant monies received and the use of capital receipts and reserves held by the Council.  There had been no use of prudential borrowing in the financing of the programme and there would be no future implications on the revenue budget due to repayment of principal or interest.

The funding of the programme in 2023/24 was illustrated by means of a pie chart set out in the report.

Close monitoring of the capital programme had been undertaken throughout the year to ensure that the projects were kept in line with spend forecasts and were considered in the Council’s cash flow forecasts.  Deviations from the spending profiles and any financial implications were taken into account in future treasury and revenue budget forecasts.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                    -    That Cabinet notes the capital programme outturn position for 2023/24 and slippage into 2024/25.