This meeting considered a request to allocate funding to several services in the council's 2024/25 budget, to enable them to cope with the effects of inflation since the budget was agreed.

Inflation Release Requests 2024/25

The Executive Director of Finance and Resources, Jake Bacchus, asked the meeting to approve the allocation of £2,000,198 from the corporate inflation provision for 2024/25 to service budgets. The request relates to the following items that were themselves agreed at the Inflation Review Panel held on 27 September 2024:

• Highways PFI¹ Contract - £638,123
• Non-Domestic Rates² - £105,145
• Waste Disposal Levy (Fixed Cost Element) - £179,873
• Waste Disposal Levy (Pay As You Throw Element 2023/24) - £602,136
• Lee Valley Regional Park Authority Levy - £7,445
• SEN³ Transport - £346,293
• Chief Officers Pay Award - £121,183 The report explained that:

Higher inflation since late 2021 has had a significant impact on the council’s budgets and costs. With inflation falling nationally since October 2022, the cost impact of inflation continues to change rapidly.

The report goes on to say that, because of this, the council decided:

not to allocate inflation to service budgets within the originally approved budget for the year. Instead, Cabinet established a corporate inflation provision and delegated authority to the Executive Director of Finance and Resources to approve releases of inflation to service budgets during the year.

The report explains that an Inflation Review Panel was set up, comprising Jake Bacchus and Martin Waddington, Executive Director of ICP, Health and Social Care Integration, and that it met on 27 September 2024 to make recommendations on these requests.

The report notes that:

Several other inflation release requests were considered by the panel but were not recommended for approval due to challenge from the panel.

The report concludes by saying that the Chief Financial Officer:

The service finance team will work with the services whose bids were unsuccessful to revise their bids for consideration at a future Inflation Panel meeting where appropriate.