Issue - meetings

Report to follow

That the budgetary variances set out in paragraph 2.0 and the forecast outturn position in paragraph 2.4 of the report submitted be noted; and

(B)     the Contingency Budget is used to fund tree inspections to be carried out on East Herts land, as detailed at paragraph 3.5 of the report submitted.

The Leader of the Council submitted an exception report on finance and performance monitoring for January 2015.

The Executive Member for Health, Housing and Community Support referred to underspends in the Disabled Facilities Grants and advised that a report on this would be submitted to Community Scrutiny Committee in June 2015.

Councillor G Jones referred to the slippage in the capital programme and suggested that the Council needed to be a bit sharper to ensure greater spend on the budget.  The Director of Finance and Support Services shared these concerns and advised that the new Head of Strategic Finance would be reviewing internal processes.  The Executive Member for Finance also reminded Members that the nature of the report was about exceptions and so slippage would be highlighted.  He suggested that the capital underspend could be reduced if the Council chose to have a less ambitious programme, which he believed would be undesirable.

The Executive approved the recommendations as now detailed.

RESOLVED - that (A) the budgetary variances set out in paragraph 2.0 and the forecast outturn position in paragraph 2.4 of the report submitted be noted; and

(B)      the Contingency Budget is used to fund tree inspections to be carried out on East Herts land, as detailed at paragraph 3.5 of the report submitted.