Issue - meetings

Report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services

The Senior Business Partner presented the Q3 position for the Council’s financial and performance monitoring for 2023/24.

The Senior Business Partner said that the revenue position had improved since Q2, from a £0.287m underspend to a predicted underspend of £0.665m, mostly due to grant income and which would be requested to be carried forward. She said that the biggest overspends were from the Crematorium, Streetwise vehicle hire and Planning income. She said that underspends were from homelessness grant income, utilities, leisure contract efficiencies, costs recovered and a delay in the HVO fuel project. 

The Senior Business Partner said that there was a capital underspend projected of £3.88m following a rephasing of projects and she referred the Group to Table 2 of the report. She said that the underspend arose from savings at the Crematorium, Bingham Leisure Centre, Gresham redevelopment and potential savings at Lutterell Hall. She said that there was also currently underspend with the Council’s Registered Housing Providers, and Disabled Facilities Grants (DFG).

The Senior Finance Business Partner referred the Group to paragraph 4.13 of the report which detailed the multi-asset funds and said that this also showed improvement since Q2.

In summary, the Senior Finance Business Partner said that the Council was in a good financial position.

The Communications and Customer Services Manager presented the Q3 Performance Scorecards, as found at Appendix G.

The Communications and Customer Services Manager said that there were five indicators currently not reaching target, including the Transformation Strategy savings being below target mostly due to income from the Crematorium, additional Streetwise costs and income related to primary contracts. In relation to the usage of community facilities, he said that Sir Julian Cahn and Rushcliffe Country Park were performing well and that the Council was looking at improving usage at Gamston Community Hall and was introducing a new diary management system.

In relation to householder planning applications, the Communications and Customer Services Manager said that performance was continuing to improve and that December 2023 saw the Team achieve their best performance in two and half years. He said that the information was only showing in current performance reporting due to the legacy in the reporting timeframe and that last month’s performance stood at 89%.

The Communications and Customer Services Manager said that the Customer Services Team were receiving an increasing number of email enquiries and measures were being taken to meet that demand while continuing to answer customer phone calls.

The Vice Chair of Communities Scrutiny Group asked about the predicted underspend of £0.332 for the DFG given the significant demand on the grant.  The Senior Finance Business Partner referred to Appendix D and the two elements to the funding, mandatory funding and the Council’s discretionary top-up funding. She said that the underspend was from the discretionary funding as it was agreed at Cabinet in July 2022 to temporarily suspend that element of funding pending a national review of the formula. She said that the mandatory grant had been spent.

The Chair of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27