Parish Council Accounts 2022-23

The Draft Accounts & Year End Budget to Actuals Comparison have now been published – here

High level commentary on them is as follows:

• Our expenditure was £65.7k more than our income for the year;  most of this related to 2 large items:
  • £41.5k was on the Bus Shelter/VAS in progress (Funded by Bannut Tree Close contribution agreed by Bob Matthews with developer) and;
  • £28k on the Outdoor Gym/Table Tennis at the Roman Park – Funded from Grants held in Reserves leaving a Roman Park Reserve of £7.9k as we move into the new financial year with an additional £5k coming from the precept.

• The Nursery vacated the Resource Centre later than expected so we received £1.8k more income from Rent this was used to pay for
  • the overspend of £1.4k on Charitable Grants to Local organisations and;
  • EPC & Lease Drawings required for the new Lease of the Resource Centre

• The long standing burden of repairing the Culverts has been now resolved by the Historic Railway Estate (Highways England) who have now fully repaired the culverts meaning:
  • The £32.3k reserve allocated to the Culverts can be now reallocated once the following items have been removed from it:
    1. £2.0k legal fees for the long term lease document (£1.25k spent in 22/23 and £750 put aside in 23/24)
    2. £1.3k Resource Centre Utility Bills whilst in Parish Council possession.
    3. £1.5k Reallocated to the Bus Shelter/VAS due to shortfall after BBLP Architect Fees
  • Balance of £27.6k left now in the Land & Buildings Improvements fund (Social Club Security Fence already been procured for this year from the fund; remainder to be planned)

• We spent £118.7k in total during the year which was within £210.92 of planned spend overall (0.18% difference!)
  • There were however a number of overspends and underspends which evened out to this figure:

• Wages – Underspend £200 – Litter Picking Hours reduced from January 2023
• Meeting room hire – Underspend £200 – Resource Centre was used for longer than expected
• CCN Printing – Overspend £500 – printing costs increased more than expected
• Maintenance Costs – Underspend £540 – Changed from Contractor to Employed Staff and less cleaning  of changing rooms
• Tree Maintenance – Overspend £560 –Horse Chestnut Tree maintenance planned however 1 other large Tree needed removing from Resource Centre
• CCN Adverts – Extra Income £648 – Since improving the quality of the magazine we are getting more adverts
• Football Hire – Less Income £390 – Less games played than expected
• Water Changing Rooms – Overspend £1.1k – Burst Pipe in changing rooms
• Football Goals Grant – Extra Income £1.25k – Unexpected successful grant application

Moving into 2023/24 we have a very tight operating budget as well as a difficult economy with inflation, labour and material costs significantly up on previous years. The Roman Park safety report has already highlighted another leg of the zip wire is in need of replacing, previously costing £2k however the tendering process for the Grounds Maintenance contracts (£1.5k under budget) has shown that there are still good opportunities to effectively manage our costs; we will need to work hard to achieve a similar outcome to last year.