Issue - meetings

The Cabinet gave consideration to a report of the Director of Finance which provided Members with an update on the Council’s 2020/21 forecast revenue budget position at Annex 1 and the financial position of the capital programme as at 31 December 2020 (Quarter 3), together with the revised capital programme 2020/21 to 2025/26, as outlined in section two of the report at Annex 2. Both elements of the report incorporated more recent information as appropriate.

Revenue Position

It was reported that the current forecast outturn position for 2020/21 was a projected favourable variance of £0.522m after allowing for approved and pending transfers to and from reserves.

The position also included additional costs and pressures that have been identified by the Authority in this financial year as a direct result of the Governments ongoing arrangements to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 which commenced on 23 March 2020. The additional pressures included forecasts of both income shortfalls and additional expenditure that have impacted on the Authority’s budgets as a result of the pandemic

The pandemic has affected nearly all aspects of Council service delivery; however, most significantly People and Place, Children’s Services and Community Health & Adult Social Care Portfolios. Action had been taken and would continue up to the year end to address variances and take mitigating action as detailed in the report.

The overall corporate position was partly being offset by the application of the £25.802m un-ringfenced Government COVID related grant funding from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), of which £7.641m was received in 2019/20 and held in a specific Earmarked Reserve to underpin the 2020/21 budget. There had been actual, in-year, receipts of £17.261m of COVID Emergency Funding, including £1.281m for the first submission for loss of income in relation to sales, fees and charges under the income compensation scheme (SFC). Further provision was made for the second and third SFC submissions in the sum of £0.924m and £0.900m respectively, the former had been submitted but not yet paid, the latter was an estimate for the period December 2020 to March 2021.

The COVID pressure was further offset by actual and anticipated refunds from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) of £3.133m together with a contribution from Oldham CCG to support the cost of adult social care services via the Section 75 Pooled Funding Agreement that was in place between the Council and the CCG.

In Annex 1 to the report, both the full Government grant and the GMCA refunds were presented as single sums so that it highlighted the level of variation across all Council budgets. However, this summary report presented the position after applying the Government grant and the refunds across Portfolio areas.

An update on the major issues driving the projections were detailed within Annex 1, Section 3.

Section 4 of the report supplemented by Appendices 3 and 4 advised the Cabinet of the grants that the Council had received. There had been a number of developments particularly in relation to support for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6