Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Shotton welcomed Mr Paul Goodland from Wales Audit Office (WAO) to the meeting and invited him to present the WAO report.

                        Mr Goodlad explained that WAO had recently produced a report for Flintshire “Financial Resilience: Savings Planning”.  He said he had pleasure in delivering such an overwhelmingly positive report to which the conclusion was “The Council’s financial planning framework was sound and it continued to strengthen its financial planning to better support future financial resilience”.  One proposal for improvement was identified which was “to strengthen financial planning arrangements by ensuring that all savings proposals were sufficiently developed before the start of the financial year in which they were to be implemented”.

                        He commented on the success of the Authority in maintaining the levels of efficiencies identified at the start of the year.

                        The Chief Executive thanked Mr Goodlad and said this was a positive and helpful report.  The proposal for improvement was recognised and he commented on the successful planning process for the current annual budget which built on past learning. 

Following comments at Overview and Scrutiny Committees, the Authority had been successful in timelier reporting of the budget by presenting it in three stages. On efficiencies, he explained that the Council’s aim in future years was likely to be 95%.  He commented that not all local authorities reported with as much transparency as Flintshire where up to date budget information was reported each month.  Mr Goodlad confirmed that many other local authorities that did not follow a similar process could adopt a similar good practice model. 

Councillor Shotton thanked Mr Goodlad for his attendance and welcomed the positive report from WAO.

RESOLVED:

That the findings of the Wales Audit Office report on the Council’s arrangements for financial savings planning which support the financial resilience of the Council be received and endorsed.