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 1st April 2025 to 31st March 2026.

The Committee received a report on the Council’s Treasury Management Strategy and Annual Investment Strategy for 2025/26.  The Council had adopted a Treasury Management Strategy and an Annual Investment Strategy for 2025/26 at its meeting on 25th February 2025 and 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, at the start of 2025/26, the Bank of England base interest rate had sat at 4.50%. As had been reported through the quarterly review reports, the bank rate had been cut to 3.75% by the end of Quarter 3 and had since been held at this level.

The Council remained significantly under borrowed against its Capital Financing Requirement and had followed the approved borrowing strategy of deferring any potential long-term borrowing whilst interest rates remained at current levels and instead utilised short or temporary borrowing from the local authority market as required. No long-term loans (those over one year in duration) had been taken out during the year. During 2025/26 the Council had taken out short-term loans (one year or less in duration) of £245.000m (from other local authorities and the Public Loans Work Board (PWLB)) at an average interest rate of 4.21%.

Overall, the Council was under borrowed by £139.028m as at 31 March 2026. As a consequence, the Council had effectively avoided the requirement to budget for and incur external interest costs in the order of £5.172m during 2025/26, based on the average rate for the existing debt portfolio of 3.72%.  Against the 2025/26 General Fund budget, there had been an overall positive net variance of £1.589m on the Capital Financing budget as reported in the 2025/26 Quarter 4 Performance report to Policy Committee on 13 July 2026. This budget included interest payable, interest receivable and Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP); a charge to the revenue budget made in respect of paying off the principal sum of the borrowing undertaken to finance the Capital Programme.

The report stated that the Council had not breached any of its treasury management performance indicators during 2025/26.  The Borrowing and Investment portfolios and a list of approved Countries for Investments as at 31 March 2026 were appended to the report.

It was proposed at the meeting that Treasury Management Training for members of the Committee be organised prior to a future Committee meeting.

Resolved:     That the Treasury Management Outturn Report for 2025/26 be noted and the plan to organise training for members of the Committee on Treasury Management be endorsed.