This report will provide details of the provisional outturn for 2010/11.

The Head of Finance submitted a report (previously circulated, now appended) setting out the forecast outturn position for the Council’s Capital and Revenue budgets for the year ended 31st March 2011 compared to the approved budget. In addition it provided explanations for variances from the outturn reported as at 28 February 2011.

Councillor Brown, on behalf of the Value and Performance Scrutiny Committee commented on the report which had been to the committee the previous evening. He thanked the report author for presenting the report in an accessible, easy to understand form. Areas of concern from the Scrutiny Committee’s perspective were the level of unachieved savings (at £582k) and the very large underspend in Community Housing and Community Development. The committee had also expressed concern at the underspend on the staff training budget. He said that the Committee felt that savings targets should be carefully set so that they were realistic for service areas and capable of being achieved.

In response to the concerns of the scrutiny committee Councillor Turner said that managers were encouraged to be ambitious when proposing efficiency savings; budgets were drawn up with contingencies put in place to mitigate the effects of medium and high risk targets not being met. The Corporate Director for Finance and Efficiency added that the many of the unachieved savings could be attributed to department restructures and lower than expected income levels. The Chief Executive advised that money from the transformation fund was spent on staff training so that overall the required budget was spent in relation to staff training.

Resolved to:-

1)     Note the outturn of £28.1m, which was £0.2m favourable to the approved Budget for 2010-11;

2)     Agree the transfer of the additional General Fund surplus of £0.2m to the Severance and HR Reserve;

3)     Agree to transfer £1.256m to the General Fund working balance;

4)     Approve the carry forward requests recommended by the Corporate Management Team and summarised in Table 8 and detailed in Appendix E of the report;

5)     Approve the net transfers (to) / from provisions 

-          £(0.7)m for the General Fund,

-          £(0.2)m for the Housing Revenue Account

6)     Approve the net transfers (to)/ from earmarked reserves

-          £(0.8)m for the General Fund

-          £0.9m for the Housing Revenue Account                            

7)   Note that movements to and from reserves were set out in Table 3 and detailed in Appendix B of the report.