Issue - meetings

To submit a report by the Director of Function (Resources)/Section 151 Officer.

It was RESOLVED :-

·     To agree the final details of the Council’s proposed budget, as shown in Section 4 of Appendix 1 and Appendix 2;

·     To note the Section 151 Officer’s recommendation that the Council should maintain a minimum of £9.2m general balances;

·     To note the comments made by the Section 151 Officer on the robustness of the estimates made, as set out in Section 5 of Appendix 1;

·     To recommend a net budget for the County Council of £184.165m and resulting increase in the level of Council Tax of 9.50% (8.6% for Council Services and 0.9% for the Fire Levy) (£136.44 – Band D) to the full Council, noting that a formal resolution, including the North Wales Police and Town/Community Council precepts, will be presented to the Council on the 7 March, 2024;

·     That any minor differences between the provisional settlement and the final settlement be adjusted for by using the general contingency which is included in the 2024/2025 budget by making a contribution to/from the Council’s general reserves in order to set a balanced budget;

·     To authorise the Section 151 Officer to make such changes as may be necessary before the submission of the final proposals to the Council;

·     To agree that £250k be transferred to school reserves from the central education underspend in 2023/2024;

·     To agree that any unforeseen pressures on demand led budgets during the financial year will be able to draw upon funding from the general contingencies budget;

·     To request the Council to authorise the Executive to release up to £250k from general balances if the general contingencies budget is fully committed during the year;

·     To delegate to the Section 151 Officer the power to release funding from the general contingency up to £50k for any single item.  Any item in excess of £50k not to be approved without the prior consent of the Executive;

·     To confirm that the level of Council Tax Premium for second homes increases to 100% and for empty homes remains at 100%.

The report of the Director of Function (Resources)/Section 151 Officer setting out the detailed revenue budget proposals for 2024/2025 for the Executive’s final review and agreement was presented.

Councillor Robin Williams, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Member for Finance reported that the Executive is required to agree a number of key matters in respect of the 2024/25 budget. This will then allow the final recommendations to be presented to the Full Council at its meeting on 7 March, 2024. The matters requiring agreement are the Council’s Revenue Budget and resulting Council Tax for 2024/2025; the Council’s updated Medium Term Financial Strategy and the use of any one-off funds to support the budget.

The Executive in January 2024, initially proposed a budget for 2024/25 of £184.219m which was based on the provisional AEF of £126.973m, this would require an increase of 10.9% in Council Tax and the use of £4.425m of the Council’s general balances to balance the budget.  In setting the budget, the Executive recognised the need to protect front line services and increasing budgets to meet an increased demand in Adult and Children’s services.  The budget proposals included capping the inflation increase for the delegated school’s budget by 2.5% which reduced the budget by £1.25m, included a saving target of £1m to be generated from workforce reductions, the postponement of the use of the Council Tax premium to fund housing projects for one year, saving £1.2m and other budget savings and income generation projects of £1.327m.  He noted that despite the short timescale between the publishing of the initial budget proposal and the date of the deadline for setting the Council Tax, a public consultation process was undertaken which included consultation within the Town and Community Councils Forum, Young People’s Forum, Older People’s Forum, Schools Finance Forum together with an on-line consultation process.

The Portfolio Member said that thereafter the UK Government has announced that Councils in England would receive an additional £600m in funding in 2024/25.  This additional funding creates an additional £25m as consequential funding for the Welsh Government and they have confirmed that £10.6m of this additional funding will return the Social Care Workforce Grant to the 2023/2024 level.  The remaining £14.4m has been allocated through the Local Government settlement formula.  The impact of this additional funding is that the Aggregate External Finance increases by £332k.  He noted also that the North Wales Fire Authority have reviewed their final budget proposal which has resulted in a reduction of £87k in the levy that the Council must fund. 

The Portfolio Member for Finance further said that the financial situation is slightly better than was foreseen at the beginning of the initial budget process.  Whilst the school’s budget has been increased, the Executive has decided that the cap on the inflationary increase in schools be reduced from 2.5% to 1.5% which will result in an increase to overall schools’ budget by £498k compared to budget set in the initial proposals.  The increase in Council Tax is also reduced to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6