Minutes:
The Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Resources delivered a presentation on the subject of budget scrutiny arrangements for 2016/17 (attached at Appendix 1). Whilst presenting this report the following points were drawn to the attention of Members:
· Officers were keen to learn from and improve upon previous approaches to budget scrutiny at the Council.
· In recent years there had been difficulties obtaining financial information in a timely manner that would enable scrutiny Members to challenge the Cabinet effectively.
· There had also been limited public consultation about the Council’s budget and it was possible that the board and / or Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group could help to address this situation.
· Assessing the extent to which expenditure was achieving value for money was challenging; outcomes could be difficult to quantify.
· Officers were aiming in future to develop a budget covering a 4 year period rather than the traditional 3 years that had been covered in the past.
· There was the potential to improve in year monitoring of budget expenditure.
· In future Scrutiny Members might want to engage more with Heads of Service about expenditure. In recent years finance officers had tended to present budget reports, though did not have the level of familiarity with service delivery that Heads of Service had to explain any variances or to answer particular questions about service expenditure.
· Improvements could be made to the presentation of the Council’s Statement of Accounts. The first 10 pages needed be written clearly and easy to comprehend.
· The Council’s external auditors had made recommendations about the Council’s approach to monitoring the budget and had suggested that this needed to become more robust.
· More detailed information could be provided in future to scrutiny Members about the budget, including a breakdown of the costs of service delivery.
· Budget data needed to be made available to Members in a more timely fashion during the budget scrutiny process. In the past Members had often received updates in the form of presentations at meetings which provided limited time to digest the information and to identify both problems as well as possible opportunities available to the Council.
· The Board was advised that many local authorities had bodies like the Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group and Officers welcomed the positive contribution that this body could make to the budget setting process.
· In future Officers were intending to provide details of expenditure and income for all cost centres per service. This would enable Members to identify patterns where applicable.
· Income levels would also be considered further in future and this would encompass not just fees and charges for Council services but also opportunities to obtain additional income from more creative delivery of services.
· Further information about the capital programme would be provided in future as this had become an important element of Council finances.
· Officers were hoping that the Government would provide more detail about Business Rate assumptions by the end of the year as this would also increasingly be a core element of local government funding.
Once the presentation had been delivered Members discussed the following:
· The use of black and red text in budget spreadsheets and the potential for the way this was presented to cause confusion. Officers explained that the Council needed to comply with particular requirements on this subject in line with local government accounting principles.
· The potential for an additional column to be added to future budget spreadsheets reflecting variances in expenditure over 10 per cent.
· The time constraints within which any actions needed to be taken in order to set a balanced budget for 2017/18.
· The potential to achieve anticipated efficiency savings for 2016/17.
· The option to use balances to help achieve a balanced budget.
· The level of detail that would be required by the Government in local government efficiency plans by March 2017.
RESOLVED that
(1) A copy of the presentation should be circulated for Members’ consideration.
(2) The report be noted.