G Taberner and W Goddard presented the Corporate Performance Report for Quarter 4 2021/22.

Highlights for the Quarter were noted as:

·       Majority of corporate objectives had been delivered or remained on target.

·       Fund value at year end £10.7 billion, estimated funding level of 109%.

·       Improvements in pension administration performance measures.

·       A small number of corporate objectives not delivered had be deferred.

·       Continued high level of vacancies contributing to a large budget underspend although progress had now been seen since the end of Quarter 4.

Section 3 of the report provided information on the progress being made on delivering the various strategies which formed the corporate planning framework.  A table provided updates in respect of developments during the quarter in delivering the programmes of work as well as updates in respect of activity that had taken place to deliver the ICT, HR and Equality strategies.

The key performance indicators for Pensions Administration were presented within the report.  It was noted that performance on priority cases continued to improve and was not affected by the creation of the Projects Team; there had been slight reduction in non-priority cases during the quarter.  A more detailed report on performance of Pensions Administration was provided for each meeting of the Local Pension Board.

Members noted the quarter 4 financial performance and forecast outturn.  The provisional outturn for the year before transfers from reserves as an underspend of £299k.

The majority of the underspend related to employee costs.  Details of the variances on the individual service area staffing budgets were included in the analysis within the report.

Members were reminded that the Authority had three earmarked reserves, The Corporate Strategy reserve, the ICT reserve and the Capital Projects reserve.

A table within the report showed details of planned transfers from the reserves in 2021/22 which resulted in a total of £1,405k being transferred for the financial year.

As outlined in the table, there were some specific areas of under-spend – including the capital budget and the areas of additional income for apprenticeships and for ICT that were required to be transferred into reserves for use in the forthcoming year.

Additionally, given that there continued to be a need to ensure the balance of reserves was kept to an adequate level going forward to meet resourcing requirements for specific corporate strategy objectives and for managing risk, it was proposed to transfer the remaining forecast under-spend for 2021/22 into the reserves, in addition to the originally budgeted transfers into reserves. This resulted in a total of £338k being transferred into reserves for the year.

The result of the above was a total net transfer from reserves of £1,067,410

The Corporate Risk Register, was attached at Appendix A. A full review was undertaken in May 2022 and this had resulted in three risk scores being reduced as highlighted on the attached Risk Register which also provided full commentary.

RESOLVED – That members:

i)       Note the report.

ii)      Approve the other transfers to and from earmarked reserves as set out in the table in paragraph 4.64; amounting to a net total transfer from reserves of £1,067,410.