Revenue
Budget
The
Council’s budget for 2006-07 was based on an ambitious redirection of
resources, to be funded by £7.5 millions of savings, largely from efficiencies.
By the end
of the second quarter, and despite a number of significant further pressures
which had arisen in year, the projected overspend had been constrained to
£401,000 (approximately 0.3% of net spend)
Three
rounds of service boards have taken place since then, and corrective action has
been identified which has reduced the projected overspend to £138,000. Further
work on reducing this continues, with the intention to deliver a fully balanced
position by the year end.
Key
features of the current projection by
|
Cllr
Wood |
A net
overspend of £218k, due in particular to core ICT project costs, offset by an
improvement in Land Charges compared to budget expectations and unfilled
Finance posts. |
|
Cllrs
Joyce and Cousins |
Net
overspend of £1.075m, due in particular to increased agency placements and
other client pressures. Spend to save projects and other means of controlling
these budgets are under development. |
|
Cllr
Cousins |
Demographic
growth budget has been applied in part to learning disability pressures and
the savings target, leaving £1.093m which has been returned to the centre. |
|
Cllr
Ward |
Parking
income is higher than expected, but the concessionary fares budget is
expected to be £900k overspend due to high levels of take-up. After applying
part of the contingency set aside for the cost of the residents’ permit, a
remaining £145k has been returned to the centre. |
|
Cllr
Hunter-Henderson |
A net
overspend of £509k results largely from the Business Transformation Unit and some
one-off staffing costs in the call centre. |
|
Cllr
Abraham |
Savings
of £321k more than the target have been identified, relating particularly to
crematorium income and Fire and Rescue Service efficiencies. |
|
Cllr
Brown |
Higher
than expected planning fee income and savings from restructuring the
homelessness service have contributed to a net saving of £81k. |
Capital
The
following table shows the total budget by cabinet member for capital schemes,
forecast spend by year end and the total overspends and total underspends on
schemes by the end of the current year. Also shown are the totals for schemes
projected to be over or underspent over their whole life. These two sets of
measures taken together provide an indication of how much expenditure variances
are an issue of timing, and how much they represent a change in the total financing
requirement of the programme.
|
|
Budget |
Projected |
Variance |
Over in year |
Under in year |
Schemes Over/under |
|
|
£000 |
£000 |
£000 |
£000 |
£000 |
£000 |
|
Cllrs Joyce & Mrs Cousins |
12,670 |
12,508 |
-162 |
330 |
492 |
266 |
|
Cllr Cousins |
3,669 |
3,572 |
-97 |
3 |
100 |
2 |
|
Cllr Hunter-Henderson |
1,264 |
1,244 |
-20 |
58 |
78 |
58 |
|
Cllr Abraham |
356 |
349 |
-7 |
0 |
7 |
0 |
|
Cllr Wood |
838 |
1,104 |
266 |
285 |
19 |
202 |
|
Cllr Ward |
7,243 |
7,068 |
-175 |
291 |
466 |
5 |
|
|
26,040 |
25,845 |
-195 |
967 |
1,162 |
533 |
As at
the date of the report, the projected net underspend for the financial year is
£195k, but within that figure there are projected overspends on individual
schemes of £1,162k, so the true level of projected slippage into 2007-08 is £967k.
The most
significant area of expected slippage is schools.
The
disposals programme continues to be monitored closely, as any shortfall or
delay will have implications for both prudential borrowing and for revenue
savings in 2007-08. The overcommitment of £533k will be offset by increased
receipt generation, or cost reduction.