Winter’s worst has battered Angus Council’s budget to the tune of £300,000
Dealing with weather including a recent icy blast, which led to chaos on the A90 and a string of lucky escapes for drivers who fell foul of the conditions, has left the authority facing further financial pressure after the six-figure overspend on a winter maintenance budget of £2.6 million.
The bad news was reported to corporate services committee members as part of a budget monitoring statement looking at all areas of council spending.
Angus is on course for an overall underspend of £2.833m across the year but corporate services director Colin McMahon highlighted the impact of the inclement conditions on the balance sheet.
The roads budget is part of the wider infrastructure services spending, which the monitoring report indicated is on track for a break-even outcome.
However, Mr McMahon told councillors: “Recent bad weather has meant we have had to put services out to help protect the public against road conditions.
“The additional cost is just under £300,000. We will be meeting roads and finance to discuss this, but the emphasis is that the services have been provided and the budget is secondary.”
Corporate services convener Alex King said: “We have always said that when it comes down to winter maintenance, it doesn’t stop when the budget runs out.
“We provide the service and find the money from somewhere,” he said.
Turning to the broader picture, director Mr McMahon said that while many aspects of the budget were easy to predict, the vagaries of others were impossible to forecast.
“The profiled budget for a given period is intended to reflect the timing of when expenditure is anticipated to be incurred or income received,” he said.
“The profiled budgets have been based on historic patterns of income and expenditure over previous years but adjusted for any deviations expected in the current year.
“Whilst some areas of the budget, such as employee costs, are relatively easy to profile, other areas are more difficult to profile accurately and this can on occasion give rise to significant variances in percentage terms being shown due simply to timing differences between profile and actual.
“It is important, therefore, to look at the position against the profiled budget and the projected outturn together to get a more informed picture.”