Friday 2 July 2010

This week has been busy - no change there then! I attended the Budget and Performance Task group earlier in the week where councillors scrutinised our budget outturn for 2009-10. I'm very pleased with this, especially in a year of such major change resulting from Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) and the introduction of the Business Management Programme (BMP). On a budget spend of £850 million, we overspent by £224,000 which is an excellent result - better than I ever saw in 20 years in the private sector! This included having to offset over £9 million in the year as a result of cost pressures resulting from the recession and the banking crisis. Well done everybody. Our elected councillors said the same too.

The Audit Committee on Wednesday examined the draft set of accounts and interim audit reports form KPMG - our external auditors. Some of you will have seen that this made the press and the telly where some of the risks raised by KPMG were taken out of context and portrayed as major financial problems for the council. I'm pleased to say that this is not the case; we delivered on a balanced budget outturn and made significant cost savings including all those to which we committed for LGR and BMP. This is important as it frees up substantial additional money to target into front line services for our communities and customers - part of our overarching goal in Resources.

Finally this week I've been out and about around the teams for a couple of desk one-to-ones (with Phil Durston, Christine Baker and Sarah Taylor-Wallace - thank you all for your time), and held another tea and biscuits session with six front line staff (one of whom brought a large cake - very kind, thank you). This always provides me with a rich learning experience and lots of ideas for improvement. If anybody wants to volunteer for future sessions, please just get in touch.

Have a great weekend and talk again next week.

Carlton