Telford & Wrekin Council to underspend by £3m

The money saved is expected to be ploughed back into the council's budget for 2015/16 to help boost its community pride fund and capacity fund.

The council's latest financial monitoring report, which will go before cabinet members on Thursday, suggests the authority now expects to be under budget by £2.8 million at the end of March.

Money in the community pride fund is available for local businesses and organisations to bid for to help fund community projects. That pot will now be boosted by a further £260,000.

Another £750,000 of the underspend will go towards the capacity fund, which helps the council pay for changes to how it works such as new computer systems to help care for elderly people at home.

The report, which also shows the council has slashed £6 million across its services since last April, is produced every three months to help the council monitor how it is spending its budget.

The council's contingency budget is cash put aside by the council to account for any unforeseen spending such as sudden increases in demand for services or inflation.

Councillor Bill McClements, cabinet member for finance and enterprise, who will present the report to cabinet at the meeting, said: "We have a financial monitoring report every three months and from the last time we had the report in front of us to this time, the position was better in that we are predicted that if nothing changes we will have £3 million of our contingency plan left and £2.8 million underspend."

"We are ahead in our savings plan and we have tried to get ahead because as time goes forward it gets more and more different difficult to deliver savings so we try to get ourselves ahead and the position we are in is quite healthy.

"Money will be taken over to next year's budget to give us a cushion for next year and that will help us going forward.

"We have been going out to get growth in our economy to create a source of income and that can be used to balance the budget. We are under budget and we will have money to carry froward to next year and that helps us combat some of the cuts."

The report, however, identifies adult social services as a problem area, with an overspend of £5.7 million. It adds: "The cost of children in care placements continues to be a significant pressure with an overspend of £1.4 million."

As well as taking note of the report, cabinet members will also be asked to approve a further £150,000 to develop the MOD Donnington site for use as an MOD fulfilment centre.

The money will be recovered from the successful bidder if Donnington beats out Bicester in Oxfordshire in its bid for MOD to focus its logistics operations at the site.