Issue - meetings

Report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services

The Finance Business Partner presented the Capital and Investment Strategy Update for Q3 and said that the Council’s overall financial position remained strong. She said that investment income was significantly outperforming expectations and that pooled fund values remained volatile but were being closely monitored.

The Finance Business Partner said that Treasury activity had remained within approved prudential limits and that the Council had no requirement to borrow. In relation to Capital Program spending, she said that the forecast underspend sat around £1.54m which was largely due to the Warm Homes Scheme reducing to match grant allocation and the land acquisition for carbon offsetting not yet being committed. She said that the Council’s commercial income constituted circa 12% of its total income.

Counsellor Thomas referred to the Council consistently having an underspend and asked about the Council’s budgeting and project profiling. The Assistant Director for Finance said that the Council’s capital program did generally come in underspent due to the difficulty in planning for and delivering such large projects across the whole financial year, with many factors impacting on resourcing and delivery. She said that Officers appraised projects and monitored and reported back on those during the year. She also noted that an underspend did not create money it was rather money already held by the Council which it could invest for longer. The Finance Business Partner added that this occurred throughout organisations due to the size of the schemes and that the Council carried out quarterly monitoring and sought to accelerate and bring forward schemes where possible.

Councillor Regan referred to S106 and CIL monies and asked it would be possible to have a schedule of who those reserves were held for over a period of some years. The Assistant Director for Finance said that the Council published a report annually on its website detailing the amount of S106 and CIL funding held and said that she would provide a link to that for the Group.

It was RESOLVED that the Group considered the Capital and Investment Strategy update position as of 31 December 2025.