The report of the City Treasurer (Deputy Chief Executive) is attached

The report from the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer outlined the final outturn position for 2018/19 for the Council’s revenue expenditure and income. For the previous financial year the outturn variance compared to the revised budget was an overspend of £293k. The summary of the overall position was:

The report examined and explained the most significant of the variances that had arisen in the directorate budgets and the corporate budgets, with large budget overspends in both Children’s and Adult’s Services as the Council had sought to cope with continuing high demands for support and service provision.

With respect to the General Fund reserve position, the 2018/19 budget had assumed there would be a transfer to the General Fund reserve of £31k, to give a balance of £22.338m. As the actual revenue budget outturn position was an overspend of £293k the balance on the General Fund Reserve at 31 March 2019 was £22.045m, with the budget overspend being taken from the reserve. The year-end General Fund balance was still deemed to be a reasonable amount for the risks the City Council is facing.

The report explained that the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) outturn position was a £11.064m favourable variance. That allowed for funding set aside to improve fire safety measures through the installation of sprinkler systems within council owned tower blocks. Those installations were to take place in 2019/20. The outturn also included £1.128m lower PFI payments due to delays in delivering the capital works on the Brunswick PFI scheme.

The report proposed the use of some of the Budget to be Allocated that had been set as part of the 2018/19 budget. These were:

·         £1.4m contribution to Manchester Health Care and Commissioning to be returned in 2019/20

·         £418k allocation to Homelessness to replace the Rough Sleepers grant allocation

·         £663k allocation to the Cross Cutting Saving target to avoid further saving requirements

·         £188k allocation for Waste and Street Cleaning Contract inflation in accordance with the methodology and formulae the annual inflation increase in accordance with the contract’s documentation

·         £340k to be released to support the revenue budget

Those were all supported.

The report also addressed requests for transfer to reserves and recommended the following:

·         The transfer to reserves of £36k to allow the High Street Cleaning service to perform future street cleaning and waste activities in 2019/20.

·         The transfer to reserves of £440k of Discretionary Housing Payments and Welfare Grant that had not been allocated at the end of 2018/19 and which could now provide increased capacity for welfare and housing support to Manchester residents in 2019/20

·         The transfer to reserves of £524k of rental income from the Arndale in 2018/19 that had been announced late in the previous financial year.

Those transfers were all supported.

Decisions

1          To note the outturn position for 2018/19 as set out in the report and summarised in Table 1 above.

2          To note the Housing Revenue Account position for 2018/19 as outlined above.

3          To note the overall General Fund position for 2018/19 as outlined above.

4          To approve the use of budgets to be allocated as set out above.

5          To approve the use of reserves as set out above.