Issue - meetings

To set out the current financial position for the Council at the end of the third quarter of 2025/26 (report of the Director of Finance (Section 151 Officer) enclosed).

Consideration was given to the report of the S151 Officer which set out the current financial position for the Council at the end of the third quarter of 2025/26.

The Portfolio Holder for Finance introduced the report and advised members that throughout the year quarterly budget monitoring reports are completed forecasting the expected year end outturn compared to the approved budget. This report provided information on the forecast year-end financial performance as at 31 December 2025.

The actual 2025/26 year-end position was currently being worked on and would to be presented to Cabinet when completed.  The Portfolio Holder for Finance updated as follows:

General Fund

The revenue forecast on the General Fund was projecting an underspend position of £187,000. Table 1 to the report provided an analysis of the forecast position.  

Members were aware when the 2025/26 budget had been agreed it had included an efficiency target of around £1.2 million. Therefore, based on the forecast underspend of £187,000, Cllr Redgate was confident in saying that the overall efficiency target was forecast to be exceeded.

General Fund Capital

Appendix B, Table 1a gave an overview of all the General Fund capital schemes. As things stood at Quarter 3, the total capital budget was £14.6 million. The authority was currently forecasting spend of £13 million by the end of the year, a variance of £1.6 million some of which would be slippage and some underspend. This would be decided once the year end closure process had been completed.

Reserves
Table 2 of Appendix A set out the forecast balances for specific and general reserves. General fund reserves were forecast at around £8.2 million, and the HRA reserves at around £8.6 million.

HRA Revenue

Section 2.4 of the report outlined that the Housing Revenue Account, was projected to have a surplus of £890,000 at year end. This was mainly due to a reduction in interest payable (£244,000) and an increase in investment income (£307,000).

HRA Capital

For HRA Capital, Table 4 provided details of all capital schemes with the programme totalling £20.4 million for 2025/26. HRA forecasted capital spend at the end of Quarter 3 was around £15.2 million, a variance of £5.2 million, some which would be slippage and some underspend. This would be decided once the year end closure processes had been completed.

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Treasury

Section 2.6 of Appendix A detailed the Council’s treasury investments.

The Council’s cash flow management continued to perform well with £833,000 forecasted to be achieved in excess of the budget.

The Portfolio Holder for Finance advised that members should also note that in March 2026 the Council restructured its HRA debt by repaying its £67.5 million of Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) HRA borrowing. In doing so the Council received a discount of around £18.4 million. The debt had been replaced with £50 million of PWLB HRA borrowing, leading to the annual interest payments reducing by around £83,000. In addition to the savings on the interest to be paid, the Council would be able to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 114