Agenda item

Report attached.

The Cabinet considered a report of Councillor Vanessa Alexander, Portfolio Holder for Resources and Council Operations, on the financial spending of the Council up to the end of the June 2025 for the financial year 2025/26 and the forecast impact on the Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy for 2025/26 to 2027/28.

In the absence of Councillor Alexander, the Leader of the Council provided a brief introduction to the report.  He highlighted the £5k forecast underspend and the main adverse variances, which were linked to ICT licenses and unrecoverable Housing Benefit claims.  He reminded members that although Total Reserves were £21.751M, £19.787M was to support the capital programme and earmarked for future commitments, leaving the General Fund (Unalloated) Reserve as £1.964M.

Approval of the report was not deemed a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

At the Full Council meeting on 27^th February 2025, Council had agreed the General Fund Revenue Budget for 2025/26.  This had set a budget for the Council’s total spend in 2025/26 of £17.313M.

The current forecast spend to the end of the financial year in March 2026 was £17.430M.  That provided a forecast underspend for the year against the budget to £0.005M.  Further analysis of changes in forecast spend were shown in Section 4 of the report.

Table 1: Actual Performance Against Budgets

Table 2, which was set out in the report, showed details of the most significant changes in the forecast variance.

Variance by Service

Section 4 of the report included a narrative and additional tables (Nos 3 to 11) on Forecast Outturn by each Service, Non-Service Areas and Funding for 2025/26, which provided more detailed information on the areas identified in Table 1 above.  Table 12 comprised the Forecast Movements in Reserves 2025/26, which showed that the Council was currently forecasting a reduction of £8.474M in its usable reserves during the year, bringing them to £21.751M at the end of the year.  The most significant movements in reserves were the forecast spending on the capital programme.

Potential Pressures and Risks in Year

Although the forecast underspend at Quarter 1 was relatively small at £0.05M, there were some real pressures and risks that needed to be considered that were not currently built into any financial forecasts.  The main pressures/risks to be considered were as highlighted below, with a more comprehensive description as shown in the report:

• Waste Disposal Site/Transfer Station;
• Oswaldtwistle Civic Theatre;
• Crematorium/Cremators;
• Food Waste Collections;
• Hyndburn Leisure;
• Housing Benefit Supported / Exempt Accommodation; and
• Pay Award.

The above pressures/risks might need to be considered over the course of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy against the forecast underspend for the year.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                 (1)   That Cabinet notes the report and asks the Corporate Management Team to continue to monitor the financial position of the Council over the remaining months of the year.

(2)   That Cabinet notes the pressures and risks highlighted in Section 5 of the report and that regular updates will be provided on any potential impact on the current forecast underspend in year and the future Medium Term Financial Strategy.