Issue - meetings

The report of the Director for Finance and Corporate Services is attached.

The Service Manager –Corporate Services presented the report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services which outlined the year-end (outturn) position in terms of financial and performance monitoring for 2020/21. It was noted that this was linked to the closure of accounts process and previous financial update reports and includes the in-year variances along with variances resulting from Covid-19.

The Group were informed that the net revenue position shows a transfer to reserves of £8.892m (originally planned to be a transfer to reserves of £1.859m (adjusted down to £1.59m to reflect carry forward commitments) a significant net increase of £7.302m. The majority of this transfer is due to a number of high value transactions in the year relating to Covid; £7.4m of Covid grants received; £4.7m of payments of Covid Business grants paid out and £5m of S31 Business Rates (National nondomestic rates – NNDR) grants (related to additional Covid reliefs). The Service Manager –Corporate Services was pleased to note that overall, the impact of Covid-19 has been mitigated by in-year savings and service efficiencies.

The Group was informed that the year-end Capital Programme provision totalled £16.130m and that actual expenditure in relation to this provision totalled £9.306m (71% of the budget) giving rise to a variance of £6.824m, and a recommendation was made to carry forward £6.682m of this. The Group were informed that significant commitments had been made with regard to Bingham Hub, Crematorium and Gresham Pitches and 3G lighting but that wider issues surrounding the Covid pandemic had impacted upon the delivery of some of the schemes and as a result there has been some slippage. The projects have now commenced with the majority of the work expected to be completed in 2021/22. It was stated that the Capital Programme will be further updated with the revised budget position at September Full Council. 

The Service Manager –Corporate Services asked the Group to comment on the monitored tasks which were outlined in the Corporate Strategy and the performance measures within the Corporate Scorecard. It was noted that despite the real impact that the pandemic has had on services, most notably the operation of leisure and community facilities, there had been positive outcomes for other indicators like a reduction in reported crime and lower NoX emissions. Additionally, many indicators that had not met their target had only been missed by a small margin which showed the efforts that had been made by officers to ensure services continued to be provided with minimum disruption to our residents.

The Service Manager –Corporate Services was pleased to note that there were no exceptions to report for strategic tasks and only six performance indicators falling below target in the corporate basket. It was noted that there were five performance exceptions on the operational scorecard: 

• LINS06 Cumulative number of fly tipping cases (against cumulative monthly comparison for last year)
• LINS25 Number of households living in temporary accommodation
• LICO41 Percentage of householder planning applications processed within target times
• LIFCS56 Percentage of visitors satisfied by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6