Issue - meetings

FSD19036

The Budget Monitoring report was written and presented by Claire Martin—Head of Finance.

The report provided an update concerning the latest budget monitoring position for 2018/19 for the Renewal, Recreation and Housing Portfolio based on expenditure and activity levels up to 31 December 2018. This showed a projected over spend of £71k for the total portfolio budget. 

The Director of Housing outlined the key factors that were negatively affecting the Housing Budget:

·  An increase in temporary accommodation costs for nightly paid accommodation

·  The cost of homeless prevention initiatives

·  Unrecoverable Housing Benefit overpayments

·  Rental income that was not able to be collected

·  Problems caused by the introduction of Universal Credit

The Director explained that there would always be a bad debt provision on the rent account, so the main aim was to try and reduce this by maximising rental collections. Currently, Liberata’s collection rate for rent was below target at somewhere between 60% and 70%, whereas the target rate was 97%. It was hoped that new IT resources would help to improve this figure. 

Members noted the Housing Budget Monitoring Summary. This detailed that the latest approved budget for 2018/19 was £24,845m, the projected outturn was £24,916m; this meant that there was a projected over spend of £71k. 

RESOLVED that

1) The Portfolio Holder endorses the latest 2018/19 budget projection for the Renewal, Recreation & Housing Portfolio.

2) The Portfolio Holder notes that a report elsewhere on the agenda requests the drawdown of a total of £2.489m from the 2018/19 Central Contingency in relation to temporary accommodation pressures and the impact of the Homeless Reduction Act.