Decision details
2024/25 Quarterly Finance Review Q4
Decision Maker: Executive, Council
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: Yes
Is subject to call in?: Yes
Decisions:
Councillor Alaric Smith, Executive Member for Finance, presented the item, the purpose of which was to report the financial performance of the Council in 2024/25.
Councillor Smith advised that:
· The original budget provided for a contribution to general fund reserve of £5,107. During the year the Council had been consistently forecasting a cost of service overspend, mitigated by an overachievement of interest on Treasury Management activities.
· At year end overspend on services had amounted to £247,274. The main adverse variances were expenditure on temporary emergency accommodation and the loss of Housing Benefit Subsidy.
· The number of people in emergency accommodation was a situation that the Council did not want to persist. Therefore, £3m had been included in the Capital Programme to purchase high quality temporary housing in the district to mitigate this.
· Costs had been incurred in respect of the Elmfield refurbishment, and unlet units at Marriotts Walk. However, both assets remained good investments.
· The £200k contingency on the leisure contract had proved to be unnecessary.
· Treasury management investment income was higher than budgeted due to high interest rates.
· Performance on trade waste was positive, and this had resulted in an underspend in this area. This was driven by Officers’ work to ensure that correct charging was applied and customers moved to direct debit payments.
· At the end of the year the Council was able to make a contribution to general fund of £6,345.
· In relation to capital spend, the first phase of the waste vehicle fleet replacement was now incorporated into a county wide waste transformation programme.
· The decarbonisation of Witney Leisure Centre was the subject of a separate report which had been brought to this meeting of the Executive.
Councillor Smith proposed accepting the recommendations of the report.
Councillor Enright seconded the recommendations
This was voted on and approved unanimously.
RESOLVED:
That the Executive:
1. Noted the 2024/25 financial performance.
2. Recommend to Council to carry forward the capital budget of £4,951,242.
3. Recommend to Council to approve the transfers to and between Earmarked
Reserves as detailed in the report.
Publication date: 11/07/2025
Date of decision: 09/07/2025
Decided at meeting: 09/07/2025 - Executive
Effective from: 19/07/2025
Accompanying Documents:
PDF 454 KB