Agenda item

To consider the report of the Head of Finance.

Cabinet member for finance and corporate assets, Councillor Andrew Crawford, introduced the report.

Officers Simon Hewings, Interim Head of finance, and Richard Spraggett, Finance business partner, were present to answer questions.

This report outlines the revenue and capital outturn for 2019-20.

On revenue, there is an underspend of £1.5 million on net service expenditure. Half of this underspend is for one-off schemes which have been carried over to 2020-21. Details are in the report.

Capital: underspend of £3.5 million, details and significant variances are detailed in the report.

Chair welcomed the committee to ask questions. The discussions are outlined below:

• Item 12: variance due to empty commercial properties. This was queried and finance officers will prepare a written response.
• Planning fees – they were below target due to a market slowdown. Finance officers will provide a written response. Officers did add that there was some uncertainty and a slow down due to leaving the EU.
• Page five – officers clarified the contingency figure. This figure is broken down in table three.
• Table three – £1.6 million for grants and contributions – finance officers explained that this figure is for housing benefit payment and housing subsidy – see table two.
• Page eight, table four – the last two years variance is around £700,000, it was asked if officers could add some previous year’s values to see the trends? Officers responded that they’ve tended to see that the number was bigger previously. In recent years, officers have worked to tackle excess budgets and reduce the variance. Written answer to follow.
• Housing benefits and rent allowances – table two, page five – it was asked what a rent allowance overpayment is? Officer responded that if a recipient of the benefit doesn’t notify of a change in circumstances, the council is entitled to claim back the overpayment and we will get a government subsidy for part of that overpayment. It is a difficult debt to collect. Universal credit is lowering this – there are no new customers and this also impacts rent allowance income. There was a Department for Work and Pensions issue regarding getting information. There is now more real-time reporting, so there are less overpayments.
• When is the audit taking place? What variance is being expected? Officers replied that the audit is expected at the end of 2020 or early 2021. There is not normally an issue with revenue outturn. These are not the biggest numbers in the accounts. Unlikely to see a significant change. If there is a material change (unlikely) it may come back to scrutiny then, if requested.
• Page nine – slippage: These are capital items, and these are listed in appendix four. There is not that many of them – Faringdon Leisure pitch is one – there were technical issues and this project will move into 2020-21. Affordable housing is the largest – this has gone to Council and the budget will be used but waiting to be attached to projects. Some of the affordable housing is linked to Growth Deal, its being dealt with. Optimism is being replaced with realistic profiles, and especially this year where there have been unexpected events and we can still expect slippage for this year because of that.
• It was confirmed that capital cannot be transferred to revenue, this is because of government regulations. There are strict rules on what counts as revenue.

Chair thanked officers and Cabinet member for bringing the report to scrutiny.