Issue - meetings

The Deputy Section 151 Officer presented the report to the Committee.  A Microsoft PowerPoint was also shown to the Committee that provided additional details.

It was stated the report had been provided to the previous inquorate meeting and had been submitted and approved by Executive on 28^th July 2025.

The report detailed the 2024/25 outturn position with regard to the General Fund (GF), the Housing Revenue Account (HRA), the Capital Programme (CP), the Treasury Management (TM) activities, and the earmarked reserves position.

Summarised at the attached Appendix 1 was the GF outturn position – this showed the Current Budget compared to the final Outturn position.  Attached at Appendix 2 were the variances at service level.

The main variances against the current budget were shown in Table 1 of the report:

The use of earmarked reserves in 2024/25 was £2.119m.  This reflected the expenditure incurred on projects at 31^st March 2025, which had approval to use earmarked reserves.

At the end of the financial year, it had been necessary to agree transfers into reserves in preparation for future expenditure commitments, some from income received 2024/25.

Transfers to reserves totalled £5.773m – £1.575m higher than originally forecast (reflecting the outturn in Table 1).  These consisted of:

• £0.200m contribution to the IT Reserve to fund future expenditure requirements;
• £0.200m contribution to the Legal Costs Reserve in preparation to fund future specialist legal advice, on matters such as the APSE case or planning  applications;
• £0.100m contribution to the 3G Pitch Carpet Replacement Reserve, as a requirement of the grant conditions from an external funder;
• £0.350m contribution to the Building, Repair and Renewal Reserve to fund future unexpected works on the Council’s buildings, for repairs such as at Pleasley Vale Business Park or security such as the post room changes – this was included within the General Reserve;
• £0.300m transfer to the Vehicle Replacement Reserve to finance new vehicles instead of borrowing and incurring interest costs;
• £0.170m transfer to the National Non-Domestic Rates Growth Protection Reserve to mitigate  against future changes to the funding of the Council and help balance the final year of the Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP);
• £0.200m contribution to the General Reserve in anticipation of any Local Government Reorganisation costs incurred by the Council; and,
• £0.055m transfer to the Transformation Reserve as the remainder of the in-year surplus.

Attached at Appendix 7 was a table showing the Council’s earmarked reserves position for both the GF and HRA.  After the transfers to reserves  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9