COUNCIL chiefs have been left with more than £3million extra cash after underspending last year.

Official figures have revealed that North Ayrshire Council underspent a total of £3,334,000 for the year 2014/15.

The underspends occurred in five council departments: Democratic Services (£221,000), Education and Skills (£1.308m), Finance and Corporate Support (£812,000), Place (£364,000) and Economy and Communities (£629,000).

But Health and Social Care on the other hand overspent £2.637m of its total budget.

The figures were presented to NAC’s Cabinet as part of the 2014/15 Service Plan year-end performance reports.

The directors told the meeting of the overall performance and areas marked for improvement for their respective departments.

Within each section contained the financial performance of each department.

A recurring reason for the under/overspends was due to employee costs.

This was deemed to be one of the factors in Democratic Services underspending five per cent of its budget. Around £193,000 was underspent relating to the Information Compliance Team and a delay in filling posts.

Education and Skills incurred the largest total figure but the underspend only accounted for one per cent of its budget.

Around £823,000 of this was relating to PPP schools due to a £500,000 insurance rebate. This was along with a £451,000 underspend in Additional Support Needs which Director of Education John Butcher stated was due to a reduction in the number of pupils placed in specialist residential schools in the area.

Within Finance and Corporate Support, £431,000 was underspent on Discretionary Housing Payments along with reduced employee costs of £425,000 due to vacant posts.

This was partially offset by an under recovery of income across the service in relation to recharges to capital and the loans fund.

A number of reasons were stated for the underspends in Place. These included an underspend of £564,000 within Property Maintenance due to slippage across projects.

This was along with underspends in Streetscene and roads of £133,000 and £111,000 respectively.

But there was also an overspend of £624,000 in Waste Services due to contractual and legal costs in relation to the council’s blue bin contract (£361,000), a one-off overspend in employee costs (£139,000) and an under recovery of income in commercial waste charges (£143,000).

The bulk of the underspends in Economy and Communities came from Planning and Protective Services (£454,000) once again relating to employee costs.

In addition, there was a £307,000 underspend in modern apprentices.

Care for the elderly was cited as the prime reason for the 2.7 per cent overspend of the Health and Social Care budget.

There was a £2.47million overspend in Older People’s Services. This mainly comprising Residential and Nursing Home Care (£1.195m), Care at Home Staff (£563,000) and Purchased Care at Home (£606,000) based on current demand.

An overspend of £850,000 was made in Children and Families mainly due to the number of placement in residential schools (£472,000) and demand for residential packages (£362,000).

But the report states that these overspends were partially offset by underspends in other areas of the service.

The most significant of these were Mental Health (£259,000) and Management (£188,000).