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News and Comment November 2020

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23 November (Part 2) - The final budgetary word?

The argument about Bexley Council flirting with bankruptcy or not rumbles on so with the aid of someone who knows more about accounting than I do, I took another look at the figures.

It seems to be fairly simple. Bexley Council is looking for up to £15 million and Covid19 has made a relatively small contribution to that. Only £3·5 million. Not good but not enough to have tipped the budget irretrievably over the edge.
Covid
The bulk of the requirement is due to non-Covid factors causing the reserves to be halved. Whistleblowing finance staff have been forecasting the problem all this year and the Auditor confirmed the Council was in trouble last March. Surely the Chief Executive and Council Leader must check and sign off all the figures?

What I find really odd is that at a Cabinet meeting at the end of January this year the Finance Director forecast that this year there would be a manageable £2 million shortfall. Did he totally fail to see the [non-Covid] problem that was about to hit him head on?

 

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