Conwy Council reserves increase by £15m during pandemic

A county council’s cash reserves have been pumped up by an extra £15m during the pandemic.

The figure was revealed by Conwy county council’s departing finance director Andrew Kirkham, presenting his last revenue outturn report before retirement this month.

He told the authority’s finance and resources scrutiny committee meeting the council had finished “on budget with no overspend” at the end of the 2020-21 financial year, largely because of extra grant aid from central government.

It meant overall reserves stood at £26.2m, more than £15m up on the £11.004m in the coffers at the end of 2019-20.

However the cash is mostly earmarked against either planned projects or “potential risks” within this financial year.

Budgets held by schools represent more than £5.9m of the funds, which includes Welsh Government grants for repair and maintenance.

Another £1.76m has been put aside for council-wide IT projects, part of which will see staff and members moving to a hybrid system of working and meeting in the near future.
Around £1.4m will be offset against next this year’s possible budget pressures and £900,000 is being used to guard against a higher than expected pay award for staff.

It all means general reserves, those which are not allocated to specific or potential projects, were only around £540,000 up on March 2020 – at £2.91m.
Cabinet member for finance, Cllr Brian Cossey, fired off a warning to the committee despite the council’s apparently swollen bank balance.

He said: “I just want to flag up with members this current year (2021-22) is not going to be an easy year – it’s going to be at least as difficult as 2020-21.”

This is because the disruption to council revenues looks set to continue at least in part because of Covid, which also brings in some extra expenses.

At what level this will continue to be supported depends on Welsh Government’s policy towards councils, which in turn will be dictated to a large extent by what extra funding is made available by the UK Government to offset losses and extra costs, caused by the pandemic.

Cllr Cossey paid tribute to Mr Kirkham’s work and thanked him for the “all the help and guidance” he had dispensed during his career with the authority.
Mr Kirkham has been with the authority since Conwy county borough council came into being during the local government reorganisation of 1996.
Prior to that he worked for Colwyn borough council from 1987 up to the formation of the new council body, meaning he has devoted more than 33 years to local government in the area.

Amanda Hughes was offered the post of strategic director of finance and resources at a meeting of the authority in March this year.
She has moved from a role at Audit Wales and previously held finance roles at Anglesey and Gwynedd councils.

By Jez Hemming – Local Democracy Reporter