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Issue - meetings

Fourth Quarter Budget & Performance Monitoring

Meeting: 16/06/2020 - Economic Regeneration and Leisure Committee (Item 116)

116 Fourth Quarter Budget & Performance Monitoring pdf icon PDF 87 KB

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Minutes:

The Head of Finance introduced the report which included the provisional outturn figures for the 2019-20 financial year. The figures presented had not yet been audited and only contained information available up until the 31 March 2020, so the impact of Covid-19 would not be seen.

 

Performance against the budget was shown in Appendix 1, with particular attention drawn to a net overspend against the revenue budget of £370k and a correction to the figures shown in the first table of Appendix 1 to confirm that the spend of the Committee was £1.89m against the £1.52m budget.

 

The overspend was caused by issues with the construction and shortfall in income of, the Mote Park Adventure Zone and associated costs of the sewer collapse. Smaller variances were detailed in Table 2 of Appendix 1.

 

In relation to the Capital Programme, it was noted that the works for Mote Park Dam had started with the proposed visitor centre and estate building having been temporarily put on hold. An overall slippage figure of £124k would be carried into this financial year.

 

The Equalities and Corporate Policy Officer confirmed that of the seven Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) two had achieved the target, one was within 10% and four had missed the target. It was noted that the impacts of Covid-19 were felt early for those four targets as events had been cancelled which affected the number of visitors across Maidstone. Of the seven annual targets three had achieved their target with the remaining four achieving within 10%.

 

The Head of Regeneration and Economic Development explained that the original budget for waste disposal had not been sufficient to cover the cost of the commercial waste services as provided by the Council, for projects under the remit of this Committee. It was confirmed that the service fee was competitive.

 

In response to questions the Head of Finance confirmed that options to recover the cost of the sewer collapse had been assessed, however due to the risk of counter claim the Council were not pursuing the £403k costs incurred. It was noted that some costs, including the loss of income from the café and parking, had been recovered.

 

The Head of Finance informed the Committee that those costs were being held against this Committee in the interest of transparency. Further clarification was given in that although the cost had arisen out of a capital project the cost could not be included under capital as it would not create a capital asset so was classed as a revenue cost.

 

Several members of the Committee felt that there had not been adequate information given regarding the situation surrounding this cost. As such, the Head of Finance would distribute a briefing note amongst the Committee Members to provide further explanation. It was noted that the figures presented would also be presented to the Policy and Resources Committee for further inspection, should any Members wish to raise the issue further.

RESOLVED: That

 

1.  The Revenue position as at the end  ...  view the full minutes text for item 116