Agenda item

(1)       Ms Hansen introduced the first quarter’s full budget monitoring report for 2012/13 which had been reported to Cabinet on 17 September 2012. 

(2)       Mr Simmonds, Mr Gough, Ms Hansen and Mr Wood answered questions and noted comments from Members which included the following:

• In response to a question on the impact of the Finance restructure, Mr Wood stated that it had been difficult, 110 finance posts had been taken out of the structure, there had been a culture change for the organisation with budget management being moved to managers.  The previous structure/way of working had been in place for 23 years up until April 2012. There were pockets of resistance to the change from individual managers but these had been quickly resolved. Generally there had been support for the change throughout the organisation. He stated that the journey would take about 2 years. The Chairman stated that it was important that the Committee were kept informed of the progress being made to move to the new way of working and that they could be kept up to date though the Financial Monitoring reports.
• Mr Gough responded to a question on “total place” and the management of public sector assets within an area.  He stated that this work was part of the means to achieve the £10m saving through property rationalisation.  He reminded Members that there was an exempt report on New Work Spaces later in the meeting.
• Mr Wood explained that the reference in Appendix 3 of the report to “interim” solutions, related to the situations where things had not gone to plan and it would take some time to find an alternative solution so a quick fix was put in place. He was aware of the importance of making sure that there was a proper long term solution to the issues and the interim solution removed as soon as possible before it became embedded.  This gave the opportunity to learn from any problems.   It was agreed that details of the lessons learned from overcoming these issues would be included in a future report to the Committee.
• Mr Simmonds stated that it was important to remember that in taking 30% of people out of finance made the unit very dependant on IT, it was therefore essential that the IT worked.   He emphasised that taking over £3m out of the Finance budget was an enormous undertaking and that just because it had been done did not mean that it had not been extremely difficult.
• Mr Simmonds referred to the indicator for paying invoices within 20 days which had slipped, he confirmed that there was no backlog in Finance, down to the difficulties being experienced in Directorates as they take on their new responsibilities from the reorganisation.   Often they had to deal with invoices with no reference number or inadequate information. 

(3)       RESOLVED that the revenue and capital forecast variances from budget for 2012/13 for the Finance and Business Support, Business Strategy Performance and Health Reform, Democracy and Partnerships and Environment, Highways Waste Portfolios based on the first quarter’s full monitoring to Cabinet and the progress of the new arrangements for finance support be noted.