Report of Councillor Phil Cowen, Executive Member Finance, Revenues and Benefits.

Councillor Cowen, the Executive Member for Finance, Revenue & Benefits introduced the report. 

All information was contained in the background at section 1 of the report and was very important as it set out what the Council had to do in terms of preparing and producing this information.   Appendix A contained a summary of a number of activities.

Matthew Fernandez-Graham, the Accountancy Manager then provided more detail in respect of a couple of points contained within the report

As of the end of December 2022, the Council had just over £34m invested in cash with various counterparties and had made in 9 months, £340k in interest, better than the budgeted amount. This had been due to the increase in interest rates and the Council Tax rebate scheme. Members were informed that an error had been spotted by Councillor Monument when the agenda had been published, within the two tables on page 70 of the report, the correct figure on the top table under the budget 2022/23 in respect of the closing balance should read £2.182m   and again in the bottom table budget 2022/23 in the bottom two rows for CFR and Under/ (over) funding of CFR should read £2.182.

Councillor Birt drew attention to section 2.1 on page 68 of the agenda pack.  He was struggling to understand the two tables, firstly, the service investments, it seemed to him that the Council had made less than half of what it had planned, and if this was the case, which investments had not been and why, and had these been carried forward.

The Accountancy Manager explained that the service investments figure would be reported to Cabinet at its forthcoming meeting and was the position at the end of December 2022, there would be some carry forward requests and not all of the budget would have been spent by the end of the financial year.

The Chairman said that he believed this was called slippage and did not necessarily mean that they would not be delivered just not in this financial year.   The answer to the remainder of Councillor Birt’s question would be contained in the Cabinet report.

On page 79, Appendix B of the report, Councillor Birt had noticed a reference stating that currently 49% of investments had a maturity of less than one week and asked if it would be better to tie up the Council’s investments for a longer term and getting a better return on them rather than just for a week.  

Members were informed that this was just a coincidence, the Council did have long term investments and were due back in the first week of January 2023 so as at 31 December those investments had a maturity value of less than a week. 

As the interest rates were due to increase again, the Chairman felt that it was not a good idea to invest long-term at a set level. 

As there were no further questions, it was

RESOLVED that:

1.    the actual prudential indicators for April to December 2022/23 within this report be noted; and

2.    the Treasury Management Mid-Year Report for 2022/23 at Appendix A and Appendix B of the report be noted.