The Council's financial year runs from April to March and its financial management arrangements cover three distinct areas:-

Financial Planning

The Council plans ahead for the next four years to ensure that it has time to give due consideration to issues in the medium term which may affects its financial position.  From this officers develop annual revenue budgets to balance funds from council tax payers, central government grants and fees income with the expenditure required to carry out statutory and discretionary services across the borough.

There are four separate pages covering each aspect of financial planning:-

• financial governance and leadership;
• financial strategy;
• revenue and capital budgets.
• finance for decision making;

Financial Control and Monitoring

The Council maintains a tight control over its resources, both physical and financial, to ensure the protection of public assets.  This includes monitoring both what we do and how we do it.  We not only make sure that we keep within the financial budgets, but we also verify that procedures to secure assets and funds are adhered to and ensure that we continually strive to achieve the best value for money that we can.

There are five separate pages covering each aspect of financial control and monitoring:-

• financial monitoring;
• treasury management;
• risk management and internal control;
• procurement and contract management;
• value for money;

Financial Reporting

The reports its financial progress to Management, Members and the Public at regular intervals.  During the year this is principally through the monitoring reports explained above, but there are also statutory and discretionary reports that provide a look back at how the Council has performed. 

There are three separate pages covering each aspect of financial reporting:-

• financial reporting;
• auditing;
• corporate spend analysis;