Purpose

This report provides an update to Cabinet on the county council's final outturn position across revenue and capital budgets. This report follows the same format as the rest of the year for consistency. The process will be streamlined for Quarter 1 reporting in the current year.

The 2023/24 outturn position is an overspend of £5.220m, which represents 0.5% of the revenue net budget. This compares to the last report to Cabinet at Quarter 3 which forecast an overspend of £5.8m. There have been fluctuations to forecasts since Quarter 3, and overall, the position has improved in the final quarter of the financial year.  

The 2023/24 budget contained savings to be delivered totalling c£80m. The county council has a proven track record of delivering savings, and this financial year has further emphasised this, with 91.5% of savings delivered. Those savings not achieved in this financial year will be delivered in future years. A revised profile of savings delivery is shown in Appendix 'A'.

The level of reserves remains robust, particularly the transitional reserve. The reserves are sufficient to support the projected budget shortfall over the medium term financial strategy, with work on-going to review ongoing challenges and the budget gap. Details of the reserves position are shown in Appendix 'A' (page 26 refers).

In February 2023 an indicative Capital Delivery Programme of £239.859m was agreed by Cabinet. Following confirmation of the final 2022/23 outturn, subsequent approved additions together with re-profiling of the programme, the in-year programme decreased to £159.135m. The outturn position for 2023/24 is spend of £153.838m, a variance of £5.296m (-3.33%). The variance is primarily the product of delayed delivery on some agreed schemes which has been mitigated where possible through earlier than originally planned delivery on other schemes within the multi-year programme.

Schools outturn position of schools delegated budget for 2023/24 is an overspend of £3.371m. This has resulted in the level of school balances falling to £69.79m. The detail is shown in Appendix 'C'.

Decision

The Cabinet approved the recommendation(s) as set out in the report.