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Budget Scrutiny (or not) - Budget Book Available
By Steve Hanlon | March 26, 2006
WLDC have published their budget book online (here). This outlines what the council spends in each department and the council income. It has the breakdown from last year and this year to allow comparison.
Expenditure in 2006/2007 will be £18,790,79 against £16,645,957 last year. An increase of just over £2 million, or more than 10%.
The other week when we had the budget meeting and during the run-up to the budget, I realised that councillors really don’t have any idea what the approximately £20 million budget consists of. Budget negotiations appear to take the following form:
- Officers come up with a list of things they want to do for the next year - “growth items”. This includes some items that they really don’t expect to get and some items that are genuinely needed. There isn’t an obvious difference between the two in the way they’re presented.
- This year, as part of the so-called scrutiny process (controlled by the Conservatives), the capital budget went to the Overview and Scrutiny committee in February. The papers are online if you’re interested. The main thing here is that the growth items are scattered through the report as footnotes and it takes quite a bit of time to build a picture of what’s being asked for.
- It was generally agreed at the O&S meeting that we didn’t have the knowledge or training to interpret the figures given in the papers and so they were basically just noted and left to the finance spokespeople and political groups to come up with their budgets. If you check the online reports you’ll see that we asked for some basic training to understand the budgets better.
- The two political groups then look at the growth items, see which ones suit their political objectives, add their own specific requirements and come up with a budget that is proposed on the night.
The problem with this process is twofold. First, the focus of all the discussion and development of the budget centres on the growth items. When first presented these came to over £3 million and would have meant a massive Council Tax bill. Reduced down they account for most of the £2 million increase in expenditure. That means that the politicians only consider a fraction of the Council’s budget in a year.
Secondly, there is absolutely no scrutiny, and no understanding, of the bulk of expenditure at the Council.
The scrutiny issue gets to the heart of a bigger problem at the Council, that is - that the elected members don’t really hold the officers and the council to account, who could get away with all sorts if they so wished. The scrutiny process is sadly controlled by the Conservative group, who seem unwilling or unable to make any changes to the situation.
For the purposes of budget preparation next year, the Labour group will try to push for changes in the overall O&S structure. That will probably fail because it would be seen (wrongly) as just playing politics. If it does fail, I’ll try to raise something at O&S that we look at the budget in more detail before next year. I don’t hold out much hope, but I think there is a similar frustration within some of the Tory ranks at the Council.
Topics: West Lancs |