PKC looks to have £4m extra in the pot
Underspend is projected
Council departments could have around £4 million extra in the budget for 2017-18 based on a projected underspend this financial year.
Perth and Kinross Council’s general fund is on course to have saved £3.933m, while the devolved school management cash pot is sitting at just under £600,000.
Based on council service budgets, the sum is £3.1m - about 1% of total service expenditure.
Ahead of the budgetsetting meeting to be held on February 22, the strategic policy and resources committee looked at the figures on Wednesday.
But Conservative councillor Barbara Vaughan sounded a cautionary note over the sums, and said: “Prudence is one thing and it can be a very commendable approach.
“But on the other hand, over the last few years we’ve had very considerable problems in bringing our budget down. In doing so we have had to make a lot of difficult Councillor Barbara Vaughan
decisions and there have been reviews and cuts to services which we, as councillors, would rather not have had to go with.”
Analysing the breakdown, which was based on figures from November last year, papers also show that the education and children’s services department had a mix of over and underspends.
Around £660,000 was overspent including from residential schools and kinship care, and third party payments.
But staff costs were down by nearly £700,000 and there were cuts in bills for transport and loans.
Housing and community care saw a leap of more than £800,000 from its last projection, sitting at £2.273m less than budget. Council papers show that about £1.3m, from the projected underspend will be put to future use by the health and social care partnership with around £600,000 kept in council reserves.
And underspends in 12 projects, ranging from broadband for rural areas to flood studies, contributed to the environment service closing in on £1.47m being left over.
Commenting on the broadband matter, Councillor Barbara Vaughan said the money had failed to reach some parts of Perth and Kinross which needed it.
Cllr Ian Miller said that the Scottish Government was playing its part in rural broadband reach, but she responded: “It’s a very big issue that we have communities that are in need of help but cannot get the help that they need for broadband.”
Senior officer Barbara Renton said that there had been issues with support from Community Broadband Scotland and that a review of how it handled applications was in the pipeline.
decisions