Thorough planning and a shared understanding between managers and members has allowed the service to establish and maintain good financial standing. The service does this by:
- setting a target level of reserves with members and informing them of all changes and the reasons why;
- determining the level of reserves through a financial risk assessment;
- having robust revenue and capital budget monitoring processes in place;
- its medium-term financial strategy explicitly taking into account future events and building them into the budget-setting process;
- prudential indicators featuring as part of the regular monitoring reports received with all variances commented on; and
- presenting a performance update report to members, including details of performance against service delivery targets, and corporate health targets as well as performance against financial budgets and other survey results.
The budget is built using a robust process, which requires growth to be bid for based on a clear business case, which is then considered against competing priorities before being incorporated into the budget proposals for members to consider.
This has resulted in the Service delivering within budget for the last three years and, following the change to a precepting authority, the Service has successfully built up its reserves to prudent levels. It is also able to exploit available opportunities for the benefit of the service, for example sharing the local public service agreement performance reward grant with the County Council.