Council Say “Hard Work Brings In Budget Underspend”

On Monday a Council Scrutiny Committee will discuss a report giving details on underspends in Wrexham Council’s budgets for 2014-2015.

The headline numbers include the figure that collectively services spent £113,472,000 which was £1,293,000 less than the budget. The bulk of this was made up from Housing, Public Protection & Environment which was £812,439 under budget, a -2.59% figure of their overall budget.

Corporate and central expenditure was underspent by £581k, and Schools underspent their delegated budgets by £719k.

The the net yield from local taxation was £76k greater than expected, and although £76,000 is a large sum of money in terms of the expected tax take it is a minuscule 0.15% increase on the expected £50,812,685 in council tax.

The budget underspends have been detailed, with the headline figures of departments broken down with summary statements of where and what occurred. Housing and Public Protection saw an underspend of £378k, with the largest chunk being explained as: “Homelessness – £194k underspend in total as a result of a reduction in the use of Bed & Breakfast accommodation and PSL’s during the year (£154k), savings in payments to Clwyd Alyn (£20k) and increased Service Charges (£20k).”

Leisure & Libraries state an overspend £217k, detailed due to in part (£147k) Plas Madoc Leisure Centre. Explanation is given as: “This includes the grant of £50k to SPLASH along with expenditure relating to Plas Madoc running costs for April, 2014 and mothball costs.” At the time there was great debate if £0 , £50,000 or £100,000 be granted, let alone maintaining the mothballing. The new figures gives the fuller financial context to that debate.

Other elements affecting the budget include a mild winter, and increased planning application fees and a £54k saving due to changing banks and subsequent fee savings.

For full details check the report PDF here, pages 7 onwards.

Wrexham Council have provided a background to these savings, saying: “During 2014/15 the Council has needed to formulate significant savings for the 2015/16 financial year and set a budget which was around £11.6m lower than it originally thought. Given this scale of reduction, then it needed to start to reduce spend in 2014/15 in anticipation of a much reduced budget for 2015/16. During the year, budget monitoring reports indicated that the Council was on target to underspend at the end of the financial year but it is only when you get to the actual outturn that you know the level of underspend.”

“The Council’s budget for 2014/15 was £227m and services spent £1.3m less than budget which equates to under 0.6%. This was supplemented by an underspend of £0.6m on Corporate and Central expenditure which was also planned. It is proposed that the overall underspend will be earmarked for three reserves relating to additional highways schemes, funding the Council’s Reshaping programme which will ensure that it is able to continue to deliver significant savings in future years and to fund further staff release.”

Councillor Mark Pritchard, Leader said “I am very pleased that all areas of the Council have come in within budget.

“All services, central areas and schools, have worked hard during the year to manage their services within a tight budget and have delivered on this.

“This has provided us with the opportunity to redirect planned one off savings to the Council’s capital reserve and a sum of £700k will be available during 2015/16 to fund highways and footpath schemes.

“During 2014/15 there was concern that schools were going to overspend on their budgets. However, the careful management by Governing Bodies supplemented by additional contributions both regionally and nationally has resulted in the positive position of Schools underspending by around £720k.

“This is particularly fortunate given School budgets will be under particular pressure in 2015/16 and that these resources are earmarked to be carried forward for Schools in the current financial year.”

You can read the report being looked at here.

Following the Scrutiny consideration the report will be considered by the Executive Board on 9 June 2015 who will decide on year end carry forward arrangements and reserves.