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1 December 2023
This is the next installment about the Council’s meeting on 21 November. (There is only one more installment. Then I can rest until 19 January 2024.)
This blog is about the Council’s budget. For the first time this financial year, the Council had a budget report as an agenda item.
Unfortunately, the report only covered the period up to the end of September. Council agreed in May to change the dates of its meetings from the first Tuesday in the month to the third Tuesday so it could get a report for the previous month. I don’t know why we didn’t get October’s report.
I had done a bit of work on the report and offered Council my summary of its financial position and asked if I had got it right.
To put this in context, local authorities across the country are strapped for cash. Some have effectively declared themselves bankrupt. Bucks Council, half-way through the financial year, has overspent by £9 million, is subject to “significant financial pressures” from adult and children’s social care, education, health, housing and homelessness, and transport. Bucks Council has already had to make cuts of £30 million and will have to make more.
My summary
At the end of September, the half-year stage: -
Income HPC had received £375k in income - £127k more than budgeted. Some of that surplus came from receipts from allotments, burial fees, bank interest and devolved services. However, the largest part of the surplus was listed as the precept i.e. HPC had received £118k more precept than the £219k budgeted.
Expenditure HPC had spent £83k on direct costs, which is an underspend of £27k. It had overspent on maintaining the allotments and burial grounds by £6k, and underspent on maintaining open spaces by £25k and playgrounds by £7k. One of the largest underspends was on tree maintenance where virtually nothing had been spent out of a budget of £8k.
Streetlights had a budget of £3k for their electricity and was underspent by £2k; HPC had no budget for maintenance and had spent virtually nothing.
Overall, HPC had a surplus of income over direct costs of £158k at the half year stage.
On admin and facilities, HPC had overspent this budget of £15k by £17k, most notably on payments for accounts, where it had overspent on a budget of £5k by £8k, and on software subscriptions (overspent by 7k).
HPC hasn’t spent anything on communications and saved £6k.
On HR and expenses, HPC had underspent on its budget of £86k by £18k. It had underspent on the budget of £82k for salaries, pensions and NI contributions of staff on HPC’s payroll by £49k. This was only partly offset by the cost of locum Clerks of £31k which was not budgeted for at all.
On projects, HPC had spent £27k on developing the burial ground (an overspend of £2k) but nothing on playground, building maintenance, office equipment, road safety, streetlight maintenance, elections, Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and planting trees. It had therefore underspent on projects by £159k.
Overall, at the half year stage, HPC had budgeted to have a surplus of only £20k as it budgeted to spend more than its income and use up some of its reserves. Instead, it is currently running a surplus of £187k.
HPC still had £600k in the bank.
In brief, HPC is doing this year pretty well exactly what it has done for the last two years – overspending on overheads and massively underspending on things which would directly benefit residents.
Discussion at Council
No-one at the Council was able to confirm this was a correct summary or not.
I was the only councillor with any questions. I asked first for an explanation of the £118k surplus for the income listed as the precept.
At first, Mr Truppin, the person named as HPC’s Proper Officer, said the £118k was part of the precept. However, it was finally agreed that it wasn’t.
Then someone suggested that the £118k excess was CIL money. This money is paid by developers via Bucks Council to provide for community services near their developments. The money has to be spent on those community services. The money is also time limited; if not spent within the deadline, the money is clawed back.
No-one knew anything about this CIL money.
I didn’t point it out at the time, as my contribution was unwelcome, but HPC still has £24k of CIL money in its reserves and Council has not even discussed how to spend this money let alone put together any proposals.
In the end, Council agreed it simply didn’t know and Mr Truppin was asked to find out.
I still had a lot of questions but Mr Truppin said many of the numbers in the report were unreliable, and more work needed to be done to explain some of the large variances which no-one understood.
Councillors didn’t want a discussion.
Despite the discouragement, I pointed out that normally at this time of year Council would be considering its precept for the next financial year. The precept is the tax HPC gets from taxpayers in the parish. Council has to decide its precept and inform Bucks Council by the end of January so that Bucks Council can collect the precept on behalf of HPC.
Normally, HPC’s Finance Committee would be looking at Council’s financial position in detail and making recommendations to Council on the precept.
However, the Finance Committee has only met twice in 2023 – in June and July – and the Council approved a proposal from Mr Truppin to effectively disband the Committee.
So Council would get no advice or recommendations from its Finance Committee.
I pointed out that Council would have to make a decision on the precept at its meeting on 19 January and would come to it cold with no preparatory work by the Finance Committee.
This would be particularly difficult if the figures were still unreliable.
So Council decided to set up a working group to help.
As I am one of very few councillors on the Council who have any experience of managing public sector finances, I volunteered to be on the working group. Council then didn’t appoint anyone to the working group.
Cllr Prashar later said it was inappropriate for me to be on a working group as I had been sanctioned by the Council.
So I have offered to help and will wait to see if the offer is taken up.
In the meantime, councillors were invited to send any questions to Mr Truppin. I have to say that, after the treatment I got at the Council meeting, I didn’t feel inclined to do so.
However, here’s one you might ask:-
How can Council have spent £12k already this year (£8k over budget) on “Accounts”, presumably to an external company on a contracted basis, and still not have an up-to date budget report with reliable figures?
And here’s some other questions:-
a) Why are receipts from allotments and the burial grounds more than budgeted? Is that because of an increase in fees or an increase in allotment holders and burials, or both?
b) Why have some of the direct costs for allotments exceeded the budget e.g. grass cutting, grounds maintenance and general maintenance?
c) Why has the cost of general maintenance in the burial grounds exceeded the budget?
d) Why has the Council underspent on maintaining its open spaces and playgrounds? What has happened to the tree maintenance contract?
e) Why has HPC paid £8k on software subscriptions?
f) Why has HPC paid £2k on loan repayments when it was told earlier this year that HPC had paid off the loan?
g) How many employed staff has HPC had over the half year (i.e. on its payroll) and for how long e.g. how many full- time equivalents?
h) How many locum Clerks has HPC had over the half year and for how long e.g. how many full-time equivalents?
i) Where is the business case for spending £71k from the reserves on playgrounds? Or £35k on building maintenance?
These, and other questions, will almost certainly not be answered before the January meeting.