Agenda item

Consideration was given to a report on Budget and Treasury Management Monitoring for Period 2 2017/18, including the Treasury Mid-Year report.  The report set out the revenue, capital and treasury management activity from 1 April 2017 to 30 September 2017.

Note:  The Deputy Section 151 Officer informed Members that recommendation ‘b’ in the report was to be struck from the list of recommendations, and that a full review paper on earmarked reserves was to go to Prosperous Communities.

The highlights from this report were as follows:

Revenue Forecasting

·         Currently forecasting an outturn position of £34,000.  There were volatility reserves available should WLDC be in the unfortunate position of being in deficit at the year-end;

·         Progress against the commercial plan target of £1 million -  £384,000 of ongoing savings have already been generated against this target;

Fees and Charges

·         The consortia bid for WLDC’s Wellbeing service was led by East Lindsey District Council.  Prosperous Communities have supported the bid proposals;

Capital Programme

·         There were a number of updates in terms of recommendations of increasing budgets on access to transport, the delivery of the wider heritage scheme and a transfer of £30,000 to the Shop Front Improvement Scheme, and an additional £58,000 for the Gainsborough Growth Programme that will be funded from S106 monies;

·         The carryover of £13.380 million was mostly related to larger projects taking place over a number of years;

Treasury Management

·         Current investments totalled £22.8 million.  More than the benchmarked average was achieved in terms of investment interest (at 1.17%).  Treasury prudential indicators were complied with;

Following questions and comments from Members, further information was provided:

·         The direction of travel indicated the movement from the last quarter. The example of salary savings was used – the direction of travel in this case was downward because there were less savings than had been reported previously;

·         The costs of the by-elections in Scotter and Blyton and Sudbrooke have been provided by the Elections Team at £8,000 per election;

Note: Councillor Giles McNeill declared an interest at this point as a party agent.

                        RESOLVED to:

(a)  Accept the forecast out-turn position of a £34k net contribution to reserves as at 30 September 2017 (Paragraph 1.1 of the report);

(b)  Note the use of Earmarked Reserves during the quarter approved by the Director of Resources using delegated powers (Paragraph 1.5.1 of the report);

(c)  Accept the recommendation of the Prosperous Communities Committee in participating in the Lincolnshire consortia bid for the Wellbeing Services contract (Paragraph 1.11 of the report);

(d)  Approve the Capital budget carry forwards of £13,380k (Paragraph 2.2 of the report);

(e)  Approve additional expenditure of £58k for land acquisition as part of the Gainsborough Growth Programme – funding will be from Section 106 (Paragraph 2.2.5 of the report);

(f)   Approve a £40k capital budget for expending on grants to be issued above £10k for capital investment as part of the Access to Transport project, previously approved.  This is being funded from the Connectivity Reserve (Paragraph 2.2.6 of the report);

(g)  Approve the transfer of £30k from the yet to be developed Wider Heritage Scheme to the Shop Front Improvement Scheme, thereby increasing the budget to £80k, in addition to agreeing expenditure (Paragraph 2.2.7 of the report);

(h)  Approve the Revised Capital Budget of £13,253k (Paragraph 2.1 of the report);

(i)    Accept the Commercial Income position;

(j)    Accept the Treasury position to 30 September 2017.