Issue - meetings

To consider progress in the Council’s performance for the fourth quarter 2020/21 including KPIs and Provisional Budget Outturn Report Q4 2020/21, and to make any observations to the Executive.

The Committee received reports giving an overview of the Council’s performance for Quarter 4 2020/21, including Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting, as well as revenue and capital budget monitoring. The reports were due to go to Executive on 24 June.

Cllr V. Lewanski, Portfolio Holder for Corporate Policy and Resources, outlined the report to Members and reported that of the 12 KPIs that are reported on in Quarter 4, all were on target or within the agreed tolerance.

Members made comments and observations on the following areas and noted that there were five Amber ratings:

Homelessness – KPI 5 – the % of positive homelessness prevention and relief outcomes – showed a decrease compared to Quarter 3. However, overall, the Borough expected to see an increase in the number of positive outcomes in this area by the end of the year as those that approached the Council in Quarter 4 were supported by the Council’s Housing team. The Committee asked for an update from the new Portfolio Holder for Housing & Support outside the meeting including what the Council was doing differently in the future to improve performance.

Fraud – Members were surprised by the high number of referrals from the National Fraud Initiative because of data matching of various government systems throwing up possible anomalies for investigation, rather than whistle-blowing notifications from the public. These figures were set out in the annual contextual target. This showed the number of fraudulent claims (148) for Single Person households claiming a discount on their Council Tax even though they were sharing a property. The Acting Head of Paid Service confirmed that robust action is taken against individuals making fraudulent claims.

Affordable housing completions – Members asked for a written answer giving a breakdown of the different types of definition included in affordable housing.

Cllr T. Schofield, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Finance and Governance, gave an overview of the financial reports for Quarter 4 2020/21. Due to COVID-19 it has been a challenging year with significant additional financial impacts that had been faced on Service income and expenditure budgets and on Collection Fund income forecasts for council tax and business rates. As at 31 March, the full year outturn was £17.852m against a management budget of £16.010m resulting in an overspend of £1.841m (11.5%). The primary reason for this overspend was that it included income losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Central budget outturn at 31 March was £6.935m against a management budget of £9.702m resulting in an underspend of £2.767m (28.52%). This underspend was due to an underspend in Treasury Management and a forecast underspend in Budget Contingencies.

It was noted that the impacts of the pandemic on the budget had been monitored closely with every possible source of funding pursued, resulting in a position of relative strength. The unplanned expenditure on the Covid pandemic was £3.782m, offset by Covid funding of £7.735m, producing a Covid-related balance of £3.953m, which included government funding to offset the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6