Issue - meetings

This report is to appraise the Economy Committee of its forecast out-turn against the 2024/25 budgets, which were approved by Full Council at its meeting of the 21 February 2024.

The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer introduced the report, that covered the Quarter 1 outturn for financial year 2024/25 and advised members the forecast showed a £30,000 overspend against the committee budget, he confirmed that the variance was due to a £43,000 overspend on property and estates management for a project officer role to undertake the office accommodation review, which was slightly offset by income received from office space that had been leased in the Civic Centre. The table on paragraph 3.2 detailed the savings approved by the committee in 2024/25 budget setting process. Finally, he drew members attention to paragraphs 3.5 and 3.6 on page 18 Table 3, which showed estimated capital slippage on the Bognor Regis Arcade.

The Chair thanked the officer and then invited members to make comment on the report. It was asked why there had been slippage on the Bognor Regis Arcade project, the Director of Growth advised that this was due to a range of factors including resource, development of the scheme and alternatives being considered. He confirmed that the team had spent a lot of time working on the budget but there had been significant financial challenges to continue to overcome. In response to the answer provided it was asked if the council had budgeted incorrectly or what had specifically changed to cause the slippage being reported. The Director of Growth confirmed that when developing a project, officers try to understand the expenditure of the project over multiple years. For this project we haven’t incurred all of the expenditure as forecast for this financial year, and therefore that spending would move to the following financial year.  It was then asked if the project would still be delivered on time or would this be dependent on where the spending fell, it was advised that a written answer would be provided for this question, it was then requested if that written answer could also include if there were concerns regarding team resourcing that would impact the remainder of the project.

 As there were no other questions, members noted the report.