Financial Services Team
01795 417531
finance@swale.gov.uk
Last updated on 24 August 2010
Becoming a high performing organisation
Content
The full document provides an integrated view of the whole of the Council's finances and medium term position. It covers revenue and capital spending by the Council, highlighting the inter-relationships between the two, and the resultant implications. It also considers all of the financial accounts, or Funds, operated by the Council and sets out how they support the Council's vision.
This document will be reviewed annually as part of the budget process.
The Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) also now incorporates the Budget Projections – a three year projection of the budget submitted to Executive for the next financial year.
Corporate Policy and Planning Framework
Swale Borough Council's mission is "to deliver, directly and in partnership with others, a variety of services to meet and champion the needs of the local community". The MTFS provides the financial structure to achieve this aim by realigning resources to policies year on year.
Objectives of MTFS
The MTFS covers partnerships, reserves, treasury management and capital. However, the most important aspect concerns its objectives for the General Fund (GF). This is the main revenue fund of a local authority. Day to day spending on Services is met from this fund. The key objectives of the strategy for the General Fund, which will also be used as the basis of future budgeting, are:
- to align the council's available resources to its priorities;
- to maintain a sustainable revenue budget. This means meeting regularly occurring expenditure from regularly occurring resources (e.g. government grant, council tax revenue, etc) but meeting unusual, exceptional or one off expenditure from reserves and balances;
- that the presumption will be for no growth in the underlying recurring expenditure. This means that expenditure on expanding or improving services should be accommodated by omissions and reductions from elsewhere within the Council's budget taken as a whole;
- to continue to make efforts to identify efficiency savings with the emphasis being on realizing "cashable" savings, that is savings which can be redirected towards priority services;
- to annually review relevant fees and charges comprehensively as a means of generating additional funding for re-investment in priority services as income from sales, fees and charges is worth approximately 9% of gross expenditure;
- to preserve a minimum of £1.5 million of GF balances to safeguard against unforeseen future events;
- to ensure the Council is in a position to set future council tax rises that are reasonable and meet the expectations of the public in relation to the level of services provided;
- to actively engage stakeholders in the financial choices facing the Council;
- to ensure value for money is achieved in the delivery of all services;
- to ensure that council tax rises for this Council are limited to less than 5% per annum to enable the Council to maximise the income available to finance the provision of services without concern over whether it would breach the Government's current capping criteria: for planning purposes an increase of 4.95% has been assumed for 2009-10 onwards in the MTFS; however, this does not restrict the Council when setting the actual council tax for those years, which in any case will depend upon the prevailing circumstances at those points in time. However, members have agreed "That the increase in Council Tax up to 4.95 per cent be established for planning purposes".
Delivering good value for money is a key priority for this Council. The Executive approved a report on 9 July 2008 that set out the Council's approach to service improvement and value for money. One method of addressing Value for Money is through closer working with other councils. With the agreement of the respective Councils, lead directors from Ashford, Maidstone, Swale and Tunbridge Wells Borough Council's have worked to put together a framework for a new improvement partnership known as the Mid Kent Improvement Partnership.
Whilst the need to continuously seek out efficiency savings has always been a priority for the Council, this has been given the added impetus of having to meet the Government set 3% per annum cashable efficiency target commencing in 2008-09.
Our 'Medium Term Financial Strategy' document is available to download below.
PDF file format.