Issue - meetings

Members considered the annual review of reserves.

Each reserve was assessed for its appropriateness.  The report detailed the statutory requirement for the Section 151 Officer to comment on the robustness of estimates and adequacy of reserves.

Currently the Authority made annual contributions of around £600,000 to reserves for replacement of assets; some of the biggest contributors to reserves were IT, the Vehicle Replacement Programme, and the future costs of investment property maintenance.

The General Fund Working Balance was estimated at £4.623 million at year end subject to the proposals within the report.  This gave the opportunity to consider at the Budget setting in March options on earmarking the excess funding in the balance.

Earmarked reserves were estimated to be £17.141 million.

Members were then given the opportunity to ask questions of officers, and make comments on the report.  Further information was provided:

·         The Monitoring Officer had a reserve of £20,000.  This was to be used for external advice, such as legal support;

·         The opening balance of the Trinity Arts Centre reserve was £11,900;

·         The Environment and Sustainability Strategy was being developed and was part of the workplan for the Authority.  Any work on issues such as decarbonisation of vehicles would not be carried out until this plan was available to work to;

·         The Connectivity Fund was forecast to be expended during 2021/2022.  This fund didn’t just provide funds for internet connectivity, there had also been scope to use it for transport matters;

·         There was a preclusion on using capital funds for revenue purposes.  The Wheeled Bin Replacement reserve had been created from revenue resources and was therefore a revenue fund.  Occasionally, wheeled bins may fall under capital funds if for example there were a large batch of bins to procure; if bins were purchased individually they were effectively ‘de-minimis’, or of little value; the balance of this reserve would be closed and budget provision made within the next Medium Term Financial Plan;

·         The Authority was aware of dangerous structures within the District; the Dangerous Structure and Building Control Grant was there as a reserve in case money was needed to be spent on a third party’s asset.  It was proposed to bring that grant back under revenue to change the way in which the work was financed; the reserve was to be closed.

The recommendations were then moved and seconded, and following a vote it was unanimously RESOLVED to:

(1)  approve the proposals for returning £172,545 of Earmarked Reserves

to the General Fund Balance;

(2)  approve the transfer of £400,000 from the Information and

Communications Technology (ICT) Reserve to the Project Investment

Reserve for the purpose of funding the Enterprise Resource Planning

(ERP) project;

 (3)  include within the revenue budget and Medium Term Financial Plan

(MTFP) 2021/22 an £11,000 net reduction in the contribution to reserves.

All recommendations above were detailed at 11.7 of the report.