Agenda item

That Cabinet noted:

·       The General Fund forecast £19.3m adverse outturn variance against the approved budget for 2023/24.

·       The performance on delivery of savings (as summarised in Section 3).

·       The General Fund additional net risk of £0.7m against which Executive Directors plan to mitigate in full (as summarised in Section 4).

·       A forecast underspend of £0.8m within the HRA and that over- or under-spends that materialise on the HRA will be funded by a transfer from or to the HRA general reserve at the end of the financial year.

·       A forecast in-year deficit of £16.4m accumulating to a total £56.1m carried forward deficit in the DSG for 2023/24.

·       A breakeven position on Public Health services.

·       A forecast £30.4m underspend against the revised Capital Programme’s Budget (Section 6).

·       That reprioritisation of HRA budgets will be required to accommodate the spend linked to emergency response at Barton House

·       The urgent officer executive decisions in respect of council financial systems; these being, a) a contract variation in the council’s ledger system b) the re-procurement of financial ledger 3rd party hosting arrangement for the Council’s ledger.

Cabinet approved:

·       The reprofiling of the Capital programme budget to reflect the forecast £30.4m underspend at P7.

·       The acceptance of the LAHF capital grant allocation and reprofiling of the Capital programme budget to reflect incorporation of the Local Authority Housing Fund’s (LAHF) £1.52m capital grant funding allocation

·       The decision to fund £242k unplanned capital expenditure on temporary accommodation for homeless families through commuted funds and reprofile Capital programme budget accordingly

·       The contract award for the procurement of external audit services provided by Grant Thornton.

·       The urgent key decision (no.33) for extended expenditure of up to £510,000 of the council’s payments system funded from the combined budgets within the Resources and G&R Directorates and the re[1]procurement of the council’s internet payment service.

·       The urgent key decision (no.32) for excess layer insurance for Bristol Beacon venue to a value not exceeding £90,000 noting that this will take the total premium value up to a potential £250,000.