Agenda item

Report attached.

The Cabinet considered a report of Councillor Vanessa Alexander, Portfolio Holder for Resources and Council Operations, which set out the Capital Programme outturn position for 2024/25, including variations to the budgets from those reported to Cabinet in January 2025.

Councillor Alexander provided a brief introduction to the report.

Councillor Khan commented that he would wish to see capital spending maximised before local government reorganisation and asked if new projects could be added to the Capital Programme.  Councillor Dad confirmed that the Controlling Group would look at possible developments which would benefit the whole of the Borough.

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 2024/25 of £4.404m at its meeting on the 27^th February 2024.

Since the Council meeting in February 2024, new schemes totalling £2.694m had been approved and added to the programme.  The additional expenditure approved was to be fully funded from by external grants and capital receipts.

In addition, the capital spend outturn from 2023/24 had slipped £40.656m into 2024/25, of which £37.769m related to the Levelling Up scheme for Accrington Town Centre, the Leisure Estate Investment and Housing Schemes, including Disabled Facilities Grants.

A further £8.482m of capital budgets had been removed from the capital programme.  As a result, the total approved Capital Programme now totalled £39.272m.  The table below provided a breakdown:

Capital Programme 2024/25

The current programme of £39.272m was not capable of being delivered in the current financial year.  Therefore, uncompleted elements of £23.236m had been slipped into the future years in which it was expected to be spent.

Outturn Position

The actual expenditure to 31^st March 2025 was £15.951m against the latest rephased budget for 2024/2025 of £16.036m.  This equated to 99.47% spend.

Following the rephasing of the programme budgets, the outturn showed a small underspend of £0.085m with most schemes in line with the budgeted profile and spent in year.

As shown in the table below, £23.097m of budget had been rephased into 2025/26 and £0.139m into 2026/27.  £12.577m related to the Levelling Up scheme for Accrington Town Centre, £6.793m to the Leisure Estate Investment, £0.409 to Disabled Facility Grants and the balance to miscellaneous capital schemes.

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

2024/25 Variance and Future Phasing of Capital Programme

The overall net position was that the Capital Programme at period 9 (Qtr 3) had been forecasting a total spend of £23.635m and the actual outturn of £15.951m was a reduction of £7.684m, which was largely due to the budget adjustment on the Levelling Up project.

The £15.951m outturn had largely been financed using 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 the repayment of principal and interest.

The funding of the programme 2024/25 was set out in a pie chart within 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 considered in future treasury and revenue budget forecasts.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                    -    That Cabinet notes the outturn position for 2024/25 of £15.951m and slippage into 2025/26 of £23.236m.