Contact: Bevis Ingram (01962) 847508; [email protected]

1 Introduction

1.1 The terms of reference of the Policy and Resources PRC includes the scrutiny of financial management. Scrutiny of financial management is not in the terms of reference of the other PRCs.

1.2 This paper outlines an approach for scrutiny of financial management, following on from the informal briefing to Committee members on 11 September, and details some regular reports that can be provided to members to aid them in this role.

2 Opportunities for scrutiny

2.1 Financial reports are provided to the Executive (Cabinet, service executive members) under three broad groupings:

i) Setting the budget.

ii) Monitoring and managing the budget.

iii) Financial outturn.

2.2 Many reports cover more than one of these topics. Each report represents the opportunity for scrutiny by the Policy and Resources PRC. The approach to such scrutiny is for the committee to determine, but examples could include:

i) Pre-scrutiny of the decisions made on service budgets or County Council budget (ie early or advance consideration of reports written for decision making).

ii) Review of reports to identify areas of service management for further investigation, including (service) task and finish groups.

iii) Review financial management arrangements for specific services.

iv) Review of budget assumptions.

2.3 Subject to the Committee's agreement, it is intended to distribute all finance reports agreed by the Cabinet to PRC members (as part of regular information distribution) with the intention that PRC members will identify issues for discussion at their next quarterly meeting. As an introduction to this, three recent Cabinet reports are appended to this paper. Appendix 1 is the Provisional revenue budget guidelines and Capital programme 2007/08 to 2009/10, agreed by Cabinet on 25 September 2006, Appendix 2 is Final Accounts 2005/06 agreed by Cabinet on 26 June 2006, and Appendix 3 is 2006/07 Budget Review agreed by cabinet on 24 July 2006.

3 Timetable

3.1 The Policy and Resources PRC is due to meet quarterly in January, April, July and October (with an additional meeting in December 2006 only). These meetings match to the following stages in the financial cycle (in outline only, the meeting dates do not currently align exactly):

January - Individual service budget reports

April - Final budget monitoring reports

July - Outturn report and issues arising

October - Provisional forward budget strategy

(More detail was provided on the slides shown at the informal briefing in September, see appendix 4).

3.2 The decision on setting the budget is made by the full council, and so is not open to scrutiny.

3.3 In addition, it is intended that the January whole Council briefing will be used to update all members on financial issues, including the budget being prepared.

4 Conclusion

4.1 The PRC are asked to agree the approach to financial scrutiny, including an indication of the information to be provided by the County Treasurer.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes: