The report of the Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) is attached.

Contact: James Walton (01743) 258915

14.1  Members received the report of the Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) (copy attached to the signed minutes) which provided financial commentary on the 2020/21 Financial Year; a year dominated by the Coronavirus global pandemic. Despite this, Shropshire Council has delivered £11.7m savings, 96% of its capital programme and a year-end underspend of £0.764m.

14.2  The Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) advised the meeting that the report had been to Cabinet, Full Council and Scrutiny and was brought to the Audit Committee to allow members to consider the controllable expenditure etc before being taken through the detail of the Statement of Accounts.

14.3  The Committee were informed that two thirds of the forecast savings had been delivered, details of which were set out in paragraph 8 of the report.  The Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) then drew members’ attention to the additional expenditure due to Covid-19 along with the Government grants used to offset this expenditure.

14.4  The Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) explained that the general fund balance as at 31 March 2021 was £14.09m which remained significantly below the risk assessed target of £15.5m.

14.5  In response to a query, the Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) confirmed that the reason why the level of school balances appeared to have increased during the year, was because the 2019/20 balance was depressed due to the dedicated school grant deficit.

14.6  RESOLVED:

A.   To note that the outturn for the revenue budget for 2020/21 is a controllable

       underspend of £0.655m (0.11% of the original gross budget of £575.462m).

B.   To note that the level of the General Fund balance after adjusting for the outturn

underspend and insurance position stood at £14.091m, which was an increased

balance when compared with March 2020, but was still significantly below the

recommended level.

C.   To note that the Council had been sufficiently provided with revenue funding relating to Covid-19 in 2020/21, and that therefore no additional costs had had to be funded by the Council’s base budget.

D.   To note that the outturn for the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) for 2020/21 was an underspend of (£3.634m) and the level of the Housing Revenue Account reserve stands at £11.341m (£10.140m in 2019/20).

E.   To note the increase in the level of Earmarked Reserves and Provisions (excluding delegated school balances) of £22.019 in 2020/21 and the reasons for this.

F.   To note that the level of school balances stood at £5.995m (£1.891m in 2019/20).

G.   To approve net budget variations of £4.812m to the 2020/21 capital programme,

detailed in Appendix 9 / Table 18 and the re-profiled 2020/21 capital budget of

£68.566m.

H.   To approve the re-profiled capital budgets of £157.430m for 2021/22, including

slippage of £2.828m from 2020/21, £115.644m for 2022/23 and £15.070m for

2023/24 as detailed in Appendix 9 / Table 19.

I.     To accept the outturn expenditure set out in Appendix 9 of £65.738m,    representing 96% of the revised capital budget for 2020/21.

J.    To approve retaining a balance of capital receipts set aside of £20.036m as at 31^st        March 2021 to generate a one-off Minimum Revenue Provision saving of

       £0.708m in 2021/22.

K.   To Approve the write off of the capital loan to SSC No.1 company up to the value        of        £0.450m with no General Fund impact.