Financial management - steps to take

The council is committed to providing statutory services but we must ensure that we are being efficient and effective in every area of our spend.   

As individuals we all have a responsibility and make a huge contribution by simply pausing and thinking “does this really need to be done right now?”.

 It is all of our responsibilities to make sure that services meet people’s needs with the best use of resources – saving money and budget control belongs to every single member of staff in our organisation.   

As you know, we have had spending controls of various sorts in place for the past year which we continue to use, all spending and the establishment is currently and continually being reviewed, we are again formally reminding people of this guidance to the organisation to avoid ambiguity and to set clear expectations: 


Spending

  1. There are new funding authorisation thresholds in place across the organisation. 

  1. Travel outside Shropshire is not allowed, the only exception is for statutory visits. 

  1. Expenses claims should only be for essential purposes – ask yourself if this visit is essential for statutory reasons.  A reminder too that any valid expense claims can only be authorised if they are accompanied by a valid VAT receipt. 

  1. External venues for meetings/events cannot be booked, you must use council buildings only.  The only exception to this is where the agreement of the assistant director has been obtained in advance and there are good grounds for using an external venue. 

  1. Refreshments for meetings/events cannot be booked.    

  1. Conference attendance where there is a cost (travel or conference fees) is not allowed without the permission of the assistant director. 

  1. Printing is prohibited unless the document must be printed for statutory reasons and/or there is no way of safely getting documents delivered electronically.  

  1. The purchase of stationery and office upgrades/changes are not allowed unless absolutely necessary and this will need to be agreed by your assistant director. 

  1. Purchasing card must always be used appropriately and follow agreed procedures. They should never be used where corporate contracts exist or spend is non-essential, including the areas set out above. 

As part of our enhanced budget management processes and analysis we now have enhanced visibility of all authorised expenditure. Lack of adherence to the above expectations – by those spending and/or those authorising – will be dealt with formally.  


Recruitment and Workforce 

  1. All workforce decisions (see 11 below) must go through the weekly Workforce Review Board.  These will look at all aspects of workforce including requests to recruit (permanent/temporary/ agency) and job evaluation, secondment, honorarium, increments and other workforce related requests.  Any workforce requests must go through this board – there will be no other permissible route to recruitment. 

  1. Where there are vacancies, any requests to fill these must go to the workforce board as all vacancies are currently under review. Priority must go to: 

a. Removing the vacancy and restructuring

b. Making available to redeployees, including those arising from resizing work 

c. Internal expressions of interest, enabling posts to be removed or more generic posts made available to redeployees 

d. Apprenticeships and trainees

e. Fixed term contracts and secondments 

To align to the resizing work, the challenge question we need to ask is “If you were asked to reduce your establishment by, say, 50%, would this be one of the posts that must be retained?” If the answer is yes, then other posts would need to be removed instead, and early thought can thus be given to redeploying or internal movement to deliver this. 

  1. Training is for essential purposes only and any training should prioritise apprenticeships, online training and Leap into Learning, and must be approved by the workforce board (travel or event fees) is not allowed without the permission of the assistant director.   
     

  2. All Subscriptions and memberships must be approved by the workforce board, any that are not directly impacting on the Council operations will not be approved.  

  1. All changes to the establishment must be approved by the workforce board who will log on the organisations Master establishment worksheet, aligned to ERP.  Changes will not be approved unless they have been through this route. 

 

Budget Monitoring 


  1.  We require 100% return for budget monitoring for each budget holder within the timescales set out in April 

  1. Keep within your allocated budget, any variation must be mitigated – secure solutions and any issues must be flagged.  Even where you are within your budget, continue to review every area of spend and look for additional positive variation  

  2. Discretionary grants for non-essential community groups, events, or projects that are not central to the Council’s primary responsibilities should not be funded and will need be approved at Directorate Leadership Teams.  

  1. All bids for external funding must align to, and/or substitute for, existing spending and objectives. All external funding is subject to a topslice to meet a Council-wide savings target of £2m every year and, in addition, must not create an unfunded burden on supporting the administration of the grant (e.g. Legal, HR, Finance, IT). All external funding applications must be signed off by the Section 151 Officer (as part of Financial Rules). 

  1. Track all delivery in our savings trackers – keep these up to date and use the Power BI dashboards to monitor the overall position – this is the single version of the truth. Any information held outside this system is irrelevant for reporting, and for undertaking any necessary action. 

 
All third party spend is currently being reviewed, with more detail to follow in the coming weeks on management of that spend 

Financial performance is now reported monthly to Cabinet and the public. We will be discussing variation at our biweekly or monthly business meetings (Executive Review Board, EMT meetings and our SLT sessions).  You will be supported to work within your budget, but you must seek that support as necessary – you are accountable!  

Overall and service specific operational performance will continue to be reported quarterly to Cabinet. It is expected, given the financial position and due to resizing work, that performance will fall in the short term. It is essential that this is nevertheless managed and appropriately signposted in advance and should be discussed regularly and approved by Directorate Leadership Teams.  

Practically we can all put in place these practical steps by asking “is this spend essential to improve outcomes?”  

If you have any ideas about what else we could do, then please make sure you share your ideas with your team manager and your Assistant Director.