Agenda item

Report of the Chamberlain. (To follow)

The Committee considered a report of the Chamberlain which provided the Provisional Outturn for 2015/16. The report advised that the provisional outturn was an overall better-than-budget position of £22.9m, comprising £12.8m, £8.2m and £1.9m respectively for City Fund, City’s Cash and Bridge House Estates respectively (a 3.9% budget variance on a combined turnover of £584m).

The Chamberlain advised that there were some areas of variation which would require the assumptions in the Medium Term Financial Plans to be revisited, particularly the timescale for the delivery of projects/works programmes and rental incomes from investment estates.

The Chairman noted that budget underspends were good news if they indicated that tight financial control was being applied, but explained that they could indicate that the initial budgets were overly generous. He commented that he would expect that, excluding underspends due to slippage of projects, appropriate budgeting should lead to a variance of around zero across the Corporation as a whole.

Members commented that the report highlighted the importance of addressing the bow wave of maintenance projects in a timely manner, indicated that the Corporation should review the budget setting process to ensure that budgets were sufficiently tight and that this Committee could seek to hold specific Departments to account where there was a large variance in budget versus spend, particularly where this related to revenue budgets.

RESOLVED – That the Committee notes the provisional revenue outturn position for the year ended 31 March 2016.