At the February Council Tax setting meeting the report referred to LABGI and stated that the first call on any funds received through this would be used to restore balances. The report referred to Slough being able to achieve £850,000 of potential income through this means; however this figure was a maximum that could be achieved.

Prudently we had not built this in the base budget, but said the first call would be to restore balances, on the basis that the actual level of funding will not be known until the NNDR3 return is completed in December 2005. This return will be used to determine the level of LABGI funding Slough gets to keep, based on growth in business over the preceding year.

At this stage therefore we do not know the exact level of funding that will be received, but current levels of growth indicate that it will not be at this level, but we will be not be sure until funding is received Late February or early March.