Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) 2025/26 - 2029/30
Appendix 2 - Council's current financial position
Revenue Outturn 2023/24
Council agreed the £289.9m revenue budget for 2023/24 on 21 February 2023. This was amended to £281.9m as part of the first quarter report to Cabinet. The overall provisional 2023/24 revenue outturn position results in an overall Council positive balance of £5.8m, after the application of agreed reserves funding to support financing of the budget and is the net addition to the Council's general fund reserves. Further information is available in the Provisional Revenue Outturn 2023/24 reported to Cabinet on 25 June 2024. The report included a review of strategic reserves and included a proposal to increase the Financial Risk and Resilience Reserve by £1.5m to provide additional financial sustainability in relation to commercial risk and grant clawback. The active management of reserves will enable the continuation of planned use of reserves to allow time to find significant permanent budget savings to achieve financial sustainability.
The positive year-end position is a testament to the collective approach taken by groups and services that kept pressures under review within the financial year and ensured that action was taken in a timely manner to outturn within budget.
Although the overall outturn is positive, the position masks overspends in some services. The positive outturn remains a significant achievement given the financial pressures faced by the services and enables the Council's sound financial position to be maintained within an extremely challenging economic and financial context. The Council has a strong and stable financial base with an outstanding record of budget delivery. Since the start of austerity, the council has made significant cuts and responded to demand pressures to deliver £207.5m of budget savings.
Revenue Budget 2024/25
On 22 February 2024 the Council agreed a revenue budget of £306.277m which was balanced through planned use of £6.834m of reserves. This approach was in line with the agreed five-year approach for planned use of reserves to allow time to identify cuts and efficiencies.
Given the cumulative impact of high inflation alongside increasing demand, there is an expectation that delivery of the budget will require active management. At quarter one, there are significant projected overspends in Children's Services, and homelessness support which will be subject to management interventions.