The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Value for Money introduced a report setting out the provisional outturn for 2011/12 and requests to carry forward budgets into 2012/13.  The Portfolio Holder reported that there was a favourable variance of £632,000 compared to the budget for the year 2011/12, which after taking into account a VAT refund, was an underspend of £80,000 compared to a forecast underspend of £50,000 in the February Monitoring report.  The Finance Advisory Group considered the carry forward requests on 13 June 2012 and agreed requests totally £72,010 for revenue and £490,107 for capital, subject to further clarification on asset management requests.

The Finance Manager tabled additional information relating to asset management requested by the Finance Advisory Group, this showed an analysis of the breakdown of the underspend on asset maintenance together with details of the proposed expenditure.

The Leader noted the comments made by the Finance Advisory Group on the Disabled Facilities Grants 2011/12 and reported that he had raised this issue with the Leader of Kent County Council.  The Leader expressed concerns that significant amounts of funding were allocated to teams that had no responsibilities for budgets, and provided assurances to Members that this issue would continue to be pursued. 

Members thanked all staff for their hard work and diligence in ensuring that the budget was balanced and that a favourable variance was achieved during a difficult year.

Resolved: That

a)     the Revenue ‘carry forward’ requests totalling £72,010 as set out in paragraph 13 of the report be approved; and

b)     the Capital carry forward requests totalling £490,107 as set out in paragraph 15 of the report be approved.