The overspend reported in the NWN this week has grown by 250k in one month. How can people justify one department being almost £2m over budget half way through the financial year?

http://newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=14499

Quoted from richard.garvie

The overspend reported in the NWN this week has grown by 250k in one month. How can people justify one department being almost £2m over budget half way through the financial year?

http://newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=14499

No Company would be allowed to do it and survive...relatively speaking.
To justify this, you will be given a load of blubber and like it!
A Law unto themselves....

Is this a case of poor spending policies, or poor local settlements to support the local demographic, i.e. do we have more old people than could be expected to have, or government is prepared to 'pay for' ?

Anyone notice any similarities between these..?

End of year 2009

Joe Mooney (Con) "The measures that we have taken recently have brought about a control of the budget and I have every confidence that the action taken will reduce it further.”

Graham Jones (Con)" We shall continue to manage financial matters soundly.”

Graham Jones (Con) "This is very early on in the budget cycle and the figures we are dealing with are projections, often with services where expenditure and income are difficult to predict, as the year goes on we will be taking action to bring budgets into line."

From the N.W.N:   "West Berkshire Council will strive to make up to £9m of savings over the next three years, according to a council report."


Middle of 2010...

From the N.W.N: "West Berkshire Council’s current financial year overspend has grown by a quarter of a million pounds in one department in a single month.

The finance department may be in for further criticism as it will be announced at a resource management select committee meeting that the predicted overspend is in fact even higher than previously stated, at £1.9m.

Graham Jones (Con) has been unable to explain the discrepancy between the figures"


Threep.

The lack of affordable housing means people at the younger end of our population will end up moving away, leaving us with a population that is older than the national average. When we look at future developments, we need to ensure provision for employment in the area and affordable housing, to allow first time buyers to get on the ladder here in West Berks. If there is no growth in employment here in West Berks, and if we don't provide affordable housing, we are going to continue to move older demographically which will only increase the pressure on the authority as elderly care grows and grows. We need to plan better going forward, but the members leave all of that to the officers, and the officers have made a complete hash of it. Unfortunately, they are not accountable to the general population.

Quoted from dodgy

No Company would be allowed to do it and survive...relatively speaking.
To justify this, you will be given a load of blubber and like it!
A Law unto themselves....

But they're not a company are they. No company would take on an open ended stream of work such as caring for the elderly whilst receiving less and less recompense for doing so, in other words the cuts in funding from central government and the council tax freeze, would they?

The alternative is to close the doors to the elderly and those others that need social care once the budget for them is spent. I'm sure not anyone would support that idea, would they?

Quoted from user23.3

But they're not a company are they. No company would take on an open ended stream of work such as caring for the elderly whilst receiving less and less recompense for doing so, in other words the cuts in funding from central government and the council tax freeze, would they?

The alternative is to close the doors to the elderly and those others that need social care once the budget for them is spent. I'm sure not anyone would support that idea, would they?

Perhaps the time has come for the third sector to take over this role.  I am sure they would do a good job and charity giving would rise when we rid ourselves of more incompetents at WBC and the Council Tax is slashed by 50% or more!

I don't think anyone would suggest closing the door to the elderly, but a clear plan and competence is a must especially when budgeting. It's not like somebody has suddenly dumped a load of pensioners in West Berkshire, any increase in pensioners can be planned for by using data such as the census. This is why a deficit of almost £2m is a disaster and represents the total incompetance at West Berks. They can release press releases saying that they get however many stars and the like, but the truth is they fail on the big issues and nobody really has faith in the local authority, despite what their PR man may tell us.

What is the annual WBC gross budget?

For people or parties to be taken seriously, they need to propose where things went wrong and where they would have done it better.  Does anyone really think it would have been done better by anyone else?

Quoted from richard.garvie

I don't think anyone would suggest closing the door to the elderly, but a clear plan and competence is a must especially when budgeting. It's not like somebody has suddenly dumped a load of pensioners in West Berkshire, any increase in pensioners can be planned for by using data such as the census. This is why a deficit of almost £2m is a disaster and represents the total incompetance at West Berks. They can release press releases saying that they get however many stars and the like, but the truth is they fail on the big issues and nobody really has faith in the local authority, despite what their PR man may tell us.

The last census was 9 years ago, how could they possibly use this data to plan the budget for this year given the migration into and out of the district during the 9 year period?

Quoted from Greenham Common

For people or parties to be taken seriously, they need to propose where things went wrong and where they would have done it better.

Exactly. The above is a good example of someone proposing a worse way of "doing it better".

Quoted from user23.3

The last census was 9 years ago, how could they possibly use this data to plan the budget for this year given the migration into and out of the district during the 9 year period?Exactly. The above is a good example of someone proposing a worse way of "doing it better".

Is there any evidence to suggest there has been a vast influx of pensioners?? - I haven't seen one quoted anywhere.

or is it User23 using this as his usual smokescreen to protect the incompetent!

I'm not saying just use the census as there is lot's of data available to WBC to use, but nine years ago, you could account for 56 year old men becoming pensioners and 51 year old women becoming pensionable. The fact that we now have a £2m overspend, if it is to do with the raise in number of pensioners then this issue could of been forecasted and accounted for in the budget.

What you are really saying user23.3 is that you follow the same "let's take it as it comes" approach adopted by WBC. This is why there is poor control over finances, as there is zero planning for the future, and with WBC determined to allow people to build with no employment provision or affordable housing options, we will be unable to address this growing issue.

A little bit of research using government data (such as the census and others) could have prevented this budget deficit and allowed tWBC to have planned for it. Instead, WBC will wait until halfway through each year, and then slash elsewhere to bring finances back into line. Apparently things at WBC are not "AS BAD" as the past. I would hate to have seen what the deficits were before then!!!

Quoted from user23.3

The last census was 9 years ago, how could they possibly use this data to plan the budget for this year given the migration into and out of the district during the 9 year period?

Next year's census will be the last - it has been recognised that far more useful figures are generated almost daily through government and council databases etc. There are plenty already saying the 2011 census is a waste of time and money, one of the instant savings the government would make would be to scrap it now.

One reason for the current overspend is, of course, the Tories' desperate desire to keep council tax rises down.  So they haven't raised enough income to cover their budgetary needs - and it's coming back to haunt them.

I'd happily take a look at WBC's books and propose an alternative budget... whether they would let me is another issue. The Tories challenged David Rendel to do it knowing fine well that the Libs are as incompetent as they are. I would happily take up the challenge, in fact I may just challenge the Tories to let me do it!!!

(I'd have to issue the challenge through the media, otherwise I would never get a reply. That's how WBC work isn't it?