This report fulfils the requirement in the Treasury Management Strategy to produce an Annual Outturn Report to review the Treasury Management activity which took place from 1^st April 2022 to 31^st March 2023.

The Committee considered a report on the Council’s Treasury Management Strategy and Annual Investment Strategy for 2022/23.  The Treasury Management Strategy required an Annual Outturn Report reviewing the Treasury Management activity which had taken place during the year. 

The report stated that the Council had continued to finance capital expenditure through maximising the use of capital receipts, capital grants and internal borrowing. During 2022/23 the Council had taken out short-term loans of £37m at an average interest rate of 4.125%, in line with the Borrowing Strategy.  No long-term loans had been taken out during the year. 

Overall, the Council had under borrowed by £212.832 million as at 31 March 2022. As a consequence, the Council had effectively avoided incurring external interest costs in the order of £8.194m during 2022/23, based on the average rate for the existing debt portfolio of 3.85%.  Against the 2022/23 General Fund budget, there was an overall positive net variance of £3.508m on the Capital Financing budget.  This budget included interest payable, interest receivable and Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP) and a charge to the revenue budget to pay off the principal sum of the borrowing to finance the Capital Programme.

The report confirmed that the Council had not breached any of its treasury management performance indicators during 2021/2022.  The Borrowing and Investment portfolios were appended to the report for further information.

Resolved:    

(1)                 That the Treasury Management Outturn Report for 2022/23 be noted;

(2)           That members of the Committee be asked to contact the Director of Finance with suggestions as to how they would like to receive Treasury Management training this year, which could be:

(i)            a topic at one of the Member Briefing included in the Council diary and open to all councillors;

(ii)          focused on Audit & Governance Committee members either as:

(a)  an in-person session prior to a Committee meeting; or

(b) held virtually via Teams and recorded for repeat viewings, which could be made available to all councillors.