To consider and decide on the recommendations as set out in the associated report.
Decision:
RESOLVED –
REASON FOR DECISION: To deliver a sustainable budget that would address and rebalance the Council’s finances over the medium term.
Minutes:
Councillor Andrew Hickey, Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance provided a short summary of the discussion that took place at the Cabinet Advisory Board and then introduced Lee Colyer, Director of Finance, Policy and Development who presented the report as set out in the agenda.
Discussion and questions from Members included the following:
- The Council set a figure of £4m as the minimum level of Reserves that it should hold.
- This figure of £4m was a judgement made by the Director of Finances based around the Council’s risk and the value of the Council’s services it needed to provide.
- On an annual basis the Council provided £65m worth of services, half of which were statutory services. Statutory services were those that the Council must provide by law. It was therefore important that the Council had funds set aside to ensure that those statutory services continued to be delivered. Reserves were also there to fund the Capital programme that would ensure the Council had the assets from which to deliver those services from.
- In comparison to other Councils, this Council was in a relatively strong position. As such there were options available to Members as to the level of assets it had. In addition the Council had no external debt.
- The level of usable Reserves had reduced significantly in the last year and this trajectory would continue unless it was addressed now.
- It was unclear what the state of the economy would be in six months’ time so it would not be prudent to delay taking action. The crisis should be addressed now.
- The current deficit for this year was £944k. If this wasn’t addressed now, the deficit by 2026 would have increased to £3.5m
RESOLVED –
REASON FOR DECISION: To deliver a sustainable budget that would address and rebalance the Council’s finances over the medium term.
Supporting documents: