Issue - meetings

The Chief Operating Officer to present a report which provides a year end analysis of the council’s overall finance and performance position on 2021-22, including progress in delivering the savings programme.

Resolved:  (i)      That the year end position be noted.

(ii)      That the finance and performance information be noted.

(iii)     That the extension to March 2024 for the letter of credit to York Museums Trust, as outlined in paragraphs 15 to 21, be approved.

Reason:     To ensure that significant financial issues can be appropriately dealt with.

The Chief Operating Officer presented a report which provided a year end analysis of the council’s overall finance and performance position on 2021-22, including progress in delivering the savings programme.

The report highlighted the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the financial challenges of underlying pressures in social care, rising inflation and the cost of living crisis, plus the need to deliver £6.4m ongoing savings.  The provisional out-turn position was a net overspend of £2.6m on the net General Fund budget for 2022/22 of £131m.  An overview of the outturn was provided in Table 1 at paragraph 11 of the report and key variances within each directorate were summarised in Annex 1.  As the Covid grant had funded the overspend, it was proposed to carry the unused contingency of £500k into 2022/23 to help deal with increased energy costs.  With regard to loans, York Museums Trust had requested that their letter of guarantee be further extended to 31 March 2024.

Performance in general had remained high despite the challenges of the past year, and compared well against similar local authority areas.  It was likely that, due to the impacts of Covid and the lag between the availability of data and the reporting period, indicators would continue to change in future reporting periods.  Strategic indicators with an improving direction of travel were summarised in paragraph 27 of the report; those with a worsening direction were summarised in paragraph 28.  Detailed information was provided in Annex 2.

Members thanked officers for their work in balancing the budget and highlighted increases in income from car parking and recycling, and successes in areas including the delivery of affordable homes, footfall in Parliament Street and reduced vacancies in city centre shops.                                                                                                                      

Resolved:  (i)      That the year-end position be noted.

(ii)      That the finance and performance information be noted.

(iii)     That the extension to March 2024 for the letter of credit to York Museums Trust, as outlined in paragraphs 15 to 21, be approved.

Reason:     To ensure that significant financial issues can be appropriately dealt with.