Agenda item

The Committee received a report setting out the final position on the General Fund and the Collection Fund revenue accounts, for the 2021-22 financial year. 

Overall, the outturn on the General Fund for 2021-22 had been £138,987 less than originally budgeted. This position had been achieved as a result of an in-year action plan put in place to mitigate a projected overspend following period 6 monitoring. The report had set out the major reasons for the variance.  At period 10, officers were predicting an underspend of £229,000, but this had decreased to an underspend of £138,987.

Net income from interest receipts had been £1.5 million more than estimated and the minimum revenue provision (MRP) for debt repayment had been £154,414 lower than estimated, which was £1.6 million net additional interest receipt to the General Fund.

The Chief Finance Officer, in consultation with the Leader of the Council and the Lead Councillor for Resources had used their delegated authority to transfer:

(a)   the underspend to the budget pressures reserve to deal with potential cost pressures in 2022-23; and

(b)   monies that had been earmarked for the implementation of technology as part of Future Guildford from the Business Rates retention reserve to the ICT renewals reserve to enable the further development of Salesforce to continue

Details of the closing balance on all the Council reserves were set out in the report, together with the ongoing policy for each. 

The Committee was advised that there was an overall deficit on the Collection Fund of £488,000, as detailed in the report.

The full unaudited statement of accounts for 2021-22 had been published on Guildford’s website and this included all reserves, collection fund and balance sheet. Once the external auditor had completed their audit, the full set of accounts would be brought to the Committee for consideration and approval, along with the auditor’s findings report. 

During the debate, the Committee made the following comments:      

·       reference to “£000” in the column headings in the table in paragraph 5.2 of the report should be omitted

·       concern that the focus of achieving the goal of 75% of customer contact being online was at the expense of mainly elderly residents who might only be able to contact the council by more traditional means (paragraph 4.16 of the report).

·       Concern over the significant variances between year to date spend for certain services compared to the revised budget figures

·       In response to a query as to unspent specific grant monies awarded by government to the Council to spend on supporting refugee families, the Committee noted that the Council was taking action to support refugees, but the expenditure may have come from other sources of funding.  Furthermore, as the 6-month period that those supporting refugee families had initially signed up for was now coming to an end, there was concern about an increasing number of guests being presented as homeless and the subsequent obligations on the Council to provide support, and this grant funding would be used for that purpose.

Having noted that this matter would be considered by the Executive on 27 October 2022, the Committee

RESOLVED: That, subject to the comments referred to above, the report be commended to the Executive.

Reasons:

·       To note the final outturn position for 2021-22

·       To facilitate the on-going financial management of the Council.