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'.

Content

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