Purpose

The Executive Member for
Finance and Governance submitted a report for Executive consideration.

 

The purpose of the report
was to seek approval of the budget development approach and timetable for the
2025/26 budget and MTFP for the four-year period 2025/26 to 2028/29.

 

Each year the Council
engaged in an annual financial planning and budget setting cycle that aimed to
achieve a balanced annual revenue budget and capital programme, set the council
tax, and set out the capital and treasury management strategy. A high-level
summary of the financial planning cycle was summarised in Table 1 with. a more
detailed timetable set out in Appendix 1 on page 11 of the document pack.

 

The annual financial
planning cycle involved the periodic review and updating of financial planning
assumptions in the light of new information and data at key stages of the
financial year in order to inform the Council’s
budgetary control, financial forecasting and medium to long term financial
planning.

 

During the 2023/24
financial year, the Council started to develop its plans for how it would
improve, modernise, and transform the delivery of its services for 2024/25 and
over the medium term to 2026/27. This work was undertaken in
order to meet the significant financial challenge that was identified in
the updated 2024/25 MTFP, and in order to respond to the statutory
recommendations made by the External Auditor in August 2023.

 

The Mayor thanked everyone
for their involvement in the report and expressed the desire that the next
budget setting process should be as cross-party as possible.

 

Decision

ORDERED

 

That Executive approves the proposed budget development
approach and the timetable for the 2025/26 budget setting and MTFP for the
period 2025/26 to 2028/29 as summarised in Table 1 and detailed in Appendix 1.