Agenda item

            The Director of Finance and Resources submitted for the Committee’s consideration the undernoted report:

“Relevant Background Information

The purpose of this report is to present to the Audit Panel the Financial Accounts of the council for 2012/13.

The Financial Accounts are an important element of the council’s overall corporate governance framework as they provide assurance to Members and ratepayers on the stewardship of the council’s finances and its financial position.

The Financial Report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013, as attached, have been prepared in line with the Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting in the United Kingdom 2012/13 based on International Financial Reporting Standards and the Department of the Environment Accounts Direction, Circular LG 09/13 dated 12 April 2013.

I can confirm that the Statement of Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013 has been prepared in the form directed by the Department of the Environment and in my opinion the Statement of Accounts give a true and fair view of the income and expenditure and cash flows for the financial year and the financial position as at the end of the financial year.

Key Issues

Reserves

The credit balance on the District Fund Reserves has increased to £20,614,051 (of which £7,290,376 relates to specified reserves).  The movement on the reserves balance is summarised in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Summary of Reserves Position

District Fund             £20,614,051

      The District Fund Reserves can be used to supplement income and unexpected expenditure in future years.  Of the £20,614,051, £7,290,376 relates to expenditure committed at year-end.

Capital Fund            £17,979,319

The capital fund is made up of the City Investment Fund (£12,979,319).  The fund has been created to support key partnership projects to regenerate Belfast and help lever substantial funds from other sources, and the Local Investment Fund (£5m) to fund smaller local regeneration projects.

Capital Receipts Reserve    £961,791

These are capital receipts which have originated primarily from the sale of assets and which have not yet been used to finance capital expenditure.  This amount relates mainly to the sale of land & buildings at Loop River (£860,000) which has been ring-fenced for the development of the capital scheme ‘Loop River – New Facilities’.

Other Fund Balances and Reserves    £7,395,483

This relates to the Election Reserve (£413,887) which has been set up to smooth the cost of running council elections and a Sinking Fund (£6,981,596) which has been set up to repay the Council’s interest only mortgages.

Capital Programme

In 2012/13 the council committed to a programme to invest £150m in capital projects including £75m in council facilities for local communities, £20m in partnership projects which will contribute to city regeneration, £50m levered from Europe and other sources to provide key economic infrastructure projects and £5m in smaller local regeneration projects.

Debt

The overall level of trade debtors had decreased steadily over the previous 3 years, reducing from £10m at 31 March 2008 to £4.2m at 31 March 2013.  Included in this figure are invoices to the value of £1.1m raised in the last three weeks if the financial year.  The majority of this money was paid by the end of April 2013, with the total debt down to £2.98m.  An analysis of trade debtors, inclusive of VAT, for the last two years is shown below:

Creditors

The council has a target of paying invoices within 30 days.  During the year the council paid 53,340 invoices totalling £97,597,574

The average time taken to pay creditor invoices was 24 days for the year ended 31 March 2013.

The council endeavours to process invoices as quickly as possible and monitors these figures on a regular basis.

Resource Implications

Financial

None

Human Resources

None.

Asset and Other Implications

None.

Recommendations

The Committee is requested to approve the Council’s financial accounts and report for the year ended 31 March 2013.”

            The Committee adopted the recommendation and commended the work of the staff of the Finance and Resources Section who had been involved in preparing the Annual Accounts.