Bristol City Council budget ‘illegal’, according to mayor

Marvin Rees. Photo: Rwendland, Wikipedia

Last year’s Bristol City Council budget was set illegally because officers knew that identified savings could not be met, according to the city’s mayor.

Speaking last week at a meeting to discuss the setting of next year’s budget, mayor Marvin Rees criticised a “culture of concealment” under the previous administration.

His comments came two weeks after an independent report by former Audit Commission chairman Steve Bundred criticised senior officers, including finance staff, at the authority.

Quoting the council’s opposition leader, Conservative Mark Weston, Rees said: “As the leader of the opposition said: ‘It would appear that officers knew the savings were not being delivered and yet deliberately kept this from members.

“’In fact, they gave repeated assurances that everything was on target. A culture of concealment prevailed.’”

Bundred, who was appointed by the Local Government Association (LGA) after a request from Rees, concluded that the 2016/17 budget assumed wrongly that all previously agreed savings had been delivered in full.

The budget, passed in February last year, also included unallocated savings totalling £32.1m, which were mostly unidentified.

Bundred said: “By the beginning of the 2016/17 financial year senior officers were assuming, but did not inform members, that a balanced outturn in that year would most probably be achieved through the use of reserves. This can at best be described as artful.”

During last week’s meeting, Rees revealed he was instigating a further independent investigation into the 2016/17 budget setting process.

He said: “I am today announcing a further investigation to continue where the terms of reference of the Bundred report ended.

“We will look into how the savings were posted in last year’s budget in the knowledge that they were not achievable.

“I will be asking the LGA to appoint another independent investigator to identify out how those failings actually took place.”

During the process of preparing the 2016/17 budget, the post of section 151 officer at the council was held by three different people, which Bundred concluded was a “significant contributory factor to the council’s financial difficulties”.

Rees told councillors that the council had now appointed a permanent section 151 officer, with the role becoming part of the senior leadership team.

The council passed a one-year budget, described as “corrective” by the mayor, with work on a medium term financial plan beginning in March.

Rees said: “We need more time to make sure we can get control of our finances in a way that ensures we are sound, maximises spending on front line services and ensures we keep the promises we have made.”