Unfortunately, the situation is dire. Despite the savings they have identified, they go into deficit again in FY23/24. The deficit continues to grow wider and wider to over £1.7m in FY26/27.
MTFS shows Hart’s long term finances spiral out of control
Even these projections may be flattering, because they rely upon a replacement for the New Homes Bonus delivering £1.2m per year from FY23/24 onwards. As the report itself says, “there is absolutely no certainty” this will happen.
No certainty on New Homes Bonus Replacement
As can be seen, funding increases in each year. The problem is that costs rise by £600-700K every year. The explanation for these massive increases is sketchy at best.
Overall, they are projecting a cumulative deficit of over £3.8m from FY23/24 onwards. That doesn’t include the loss they will make this year. They budgeted for a £381K deficit and have already raided £1.4m from reserves to cover the loss of income from the Leisure Centres.
Impact on Reserves
The Council have said that the minimum reserves they require is £5.3m. At the beginning of this year they had £6.8m of reserves. Therefore, they only have headroom of £1.5m.
Hart Reserves at Risk
Depending upon how bad the outturn is for this financial year, there is a high risk that they deplete their reserves below the minimum requirement in the coming years.
We can only hope that the secret meeting next week to discuss restructuring of senior management will deliver further savings.
Hart Council Senior Management Restructure
Perhaps it is time they looked at more radical ideas such as joining forces with a neighbouring council as we outlined here.
We asked questions at last week’s full Council Meeting. Unfortunately, we got a lot of excuses and not much in the way of concrete information. In summary:
Apparently, they were told by the Government to budget for the full amount due under the leisure contract in order to qualify for compensation. Now they’re sitting on a £700K loss year-to date. Apparently, they expect to lose the entire £1.4m they budgeted for the full year. This loss was not even identified as a risk in the budget that was signed off by Council in February 2021.
They are transferring £1.393m from reserves to cover the Leisure Centre losses. This reserve apparently comes from a VAT refund received some time ago. We tried to press to ask what sports facilities will not now be delivered. Apparently, spending this money doesn’t affect anything else. We remain to be convinced because it was the Cabinet minutes that revealed what the funds were earmarked for:
Hart Leisure Centres Bailed Out from Reserves
The excuse for producing an Infrastructure Delivery Plan where 72% of the projects are not costed is that the IDP is “a living document”. The last version we can find is dated February 2018. It may be just about be alive, but it’s been in hibernation since then. It’s disgraceful that they are producing such shoddy documents. We have been assured a further version will be produced after the CIL consultation has been completed.
According to the FY21/22 budget book (account 91019), the track record of actual and budget for income from the Leisure Centres is:
FY18/19: £828K actual
FY19/20: £1,268K actual
FY20/21: £633K budget
FY21/22: £1,407K budget.
What was the thinking behind setting the budget at that level and what plans were made to deliver record revenue from the Leisure Centres during a pandemic?
Answer: Hart District Council has a contractual arrangement with Everyone Active (EA); for robust commercial reasons this was used as the budget for 21/22. The Government recognised the contractual position for Local Authorities and to
mitigate the worst adverse impact introduced a compensation scheme. The scheme is linked to the published Budget Book. The 20/21 Budget Book reflects the contracted management fee with Sports Leisure Management Ltd.
The budget accounts for the management fee contractually agreed with EA, it is not directly dependent upon Leisure Centre usage. A new contractual arrangement is being entered into moving forward which takes account of the anticipated pandemic recovery trajectory.
Supplementary: If the budget was set at £1,407k and government support was expected to that level,
why is income down £700k at the halfway point.
Supplementary Answer: The government compensation scheme does not cover for the full amount, but is based
upon the set budget, which reflected the contractual agreement with EA. The government gives some of the money based the budget not all, which is why it has fallen short. The amount entered into the budget book was correct as that it is what we would expect under the contract with EA in normal circumstances.
Question 2:
The Q2 Monitoring report shows that the Leisure Centres are reported to have a shortfall in income of £700K YTD and Cabinet papers indicate that this shortfall will be made up from reserves earmarked for Sports Facilities. However, note 5.11.1 in the draft accounts sets out the details of earmarked reserves and does not explicitly mention a reserve for Sports Facilities. Can you please explain exactly how much is being transferred and where the money is coming from?
Hart Council Earmarked Reserves
Answer: There is an earmarked reserve with funding set aside from a historic VAT refund on leisure services to the value of £1.393k. This reserve forms part of Corporate Services earmarked reserves. The reserve will be used as needed depending on our review of open book income and expenditure on the contract with Everyone Active.
To be clear this is revenue budget money and is not taking away from any leisure services capital reserves or Section 106 funding.
Supplementary: What risk is there of a further reserve transfer next year?
Supplementary Answer: The budget to be approved in February anticipates the contractual amount we will receive from EA, so there should be no need for a further transfer, as we are producing a balanced budget.
Hart Makes Excuses Question 3:
The recently published Infrastructure Delivery Plan (IDP) shows a funding gap of £57.9m. However, 72% of the projects identified remain un-costed. What is the realistic estimate of the full infrastructure funding gap and when will a complete IDP be published?
Hart Makes Excuses – Hart Infrastructure Plan 72% un-costed
Answer: The Infrastructure Delivery Plan is a living document, which is reported to Cabinet and Overview & Scrutiny at regular intervals. The report referenced in the question is the one presented to those committees in November. The next iteration of the Infrastructure Delivery Plan is due to be presented in the spring. This will have an updated estimate of
the funding requirements and the shortfall.
Supplementary: The indication in November was that there is that the CIL contribution will meet of ¼ of
the IDP funding. What is the impact on the CIL consultation if you are to republish a ‘proper’ IDP in three months’ time?
Supplementary Answer: The results of the CIL consultation will inform the next iteration of the IDP, but government mandates that the IDP must be set up with a shortfall to allow for developer contributions and other funding mechanisms to operate. The next iteration of the IDP will be published after the CIL consultation is complete, and then we will be able to establish the estimates of funding and shortfall at that time.
Hart Makes Excuses Question 4:
Which sports facilities will now not get delivered because of the transfer from reserves to cover the hole in the Leisure Centre budget?
Answer: The money that is being used to subsidise EA is coming from a revenue fund not S106 money or Capital Reserves, so there will be no impact on future provision leisure facilities or services.
Supplementary: Something must be losing money somewhere. If you making unplanned use of reserves on the leisure centre, what would that money have been spent on?
Supplementary Answer: The Council has reserves earmarked for specific purposes and a general reserve built
up that balances the ebbs and flows of our revenue streams. It is built up in good years to deal with difficult years, it is basically a ‘balancing reserve’. The last two years have been especially challenging because of the pandemic, so it has been a natural decision to use some of the reserves put away for a ‘rainy day’ for a couple of ‘rainy years’ and we would seek to add to the reserves again in good years. The money is there for that purpose. No one has lost out; it is simply good financial management.
Happy New Year everyone. New Year, same old story. They budgeted record income from the Leisure Centres, despite the difficulties arising from Covid-19 restrictions. As a result, the Leisure Centre budget is under considerable pressure this year. They appear to have received nothing so far. Consequently, they are transferring cash from earmarked reserves to cover the shortfall. They reserves they are using were supposed to be used for sports facilities.
It is understandable that revenue is down. However, why did they budget for record income because it was obvious there would be difficulties?
Let’s go through the detail.
Hart Leisure Centres Record Income Budget
All versions of the budget book show the same income budget.
Hart Leisure Centres Budget
As can be seen, the actual and budgeted income by year is:
FY18/19: £828K actual
FY19/20: £1,268K actual
FY20/21: £633K budget
FY21/22: £1,407K budget (record budget)
They decided it would be a good idea to plan for record income for FY21/22 despite the country being in lockdown at the time they set the budget. There was a large £399K overspend in Leisure in FY20/21 which should have given some indication of the difficulties facing them.
Leisure Centre Budget Shortfall
The recent Q2 Monitoring Report shows a £700K deficit year to date. Assuming the budget was apportioned equally across the year, they expected approximately £700K income in the first half of the year and have received nothing. That’s quite a spectacular budget failure.
Leisure Centre £700K overspend
Reserve Transfer
To cover the shortfall, they are planning to transfer money from earmarked reserves. The papers surrounding this have been kept secret, but the minutes of the Cabinet meeting give us a hint of what is happening.
Hart Leisure Centres Bailed Out from Reserves
The minutes say they will release reserves earmarked for sports facilities. The trouble is, it is difficult to see where these reserves for Sports Facilities are held. The draft accounts for last year give an analysis of the earmarked reserves in Note 5.11.1.
Hart Council Earmarked Reserves
We can find no explicit mention of reserves earmarked for Sports Facilities. They must be somehow buried in the £2.383m Corporate Services reserve.
Tales of the Unexpected – Hart changes the budget yet again
Despite the intense scrutiny being applied to Hart’s budget processes, they have published yet another version of the FY21/22 budget. This latest adjustment comes with the draft Q2 monitoring report published in papers due to be examined by Overview and Scrutiny next week. There’s more twists and turns in the budget than Tales of the Unexpected.
Hart Changes the Budget between Q1 and Q2 Monitoring Reports FY21-22
The headline total of £10,794K has not changed. However, they have apparently transferred £694K from Technical and Environmental Services to Corporate. No explanation is given for this change. As we understand it, the Constitution demands that changes larger than £50K are approved by full Council.
History of Hart Budget Changes
This is not the first time Hart has changed the budget this year. Below is our tracking of how the budget has changed since February.
Hart Changes the Budget Throughout FY21-22
At Council in July. we asked about the changes between the draft and final budgets. We also covered the budget changes here. We were told that the changes were technical in nature relating to grants from Government, SANG funding and depreciation. It is beyond ridiculous that the budget keeps changing between monitoring reports. How on earth do they keep track of it? How do the managers know what they are working to?
Hart Changes the Budget from Deficit to Balanced
In addition, they have airbrushed the deficit budget from history be claiming the original budget, set in February, was balanced.
FY21-22 Alleged Balanced Budget
But this contradicts what they said about it in February. Then they acknowledged they were budgeting for a £381K deficit.
Hart Council budget deficits 2021/22 and 2022/23
Budget Bad News
The main bad news buried in the report is that Hart has incurred a £700K deficit so far on the Leisure contract.
Hart Leisure Centre £700K overspend
Budget Good News
There is some good news in the report. They are now forecasting a deficit of £612K. This is better than the £776K forecast in Q1. Although worse than the budgeted deficit of £381K. However, the deficit may reduce to £240k if their claim for compensation for loss of fee and charges income is successful.
CCH has sponsored a paper recommending an internal audit of the Shapley Heath project finances. This comes despite increasingly vitriolic comments about We Heart Hart on their Facebook page.
The full paper can be found here. The title block shows what the paper is about and the Cabinet member responsible:
James Radley Sponsor of Shapley Heath Internal Audit
They are proposing quite a wide-ranging review of the project:
Shapley Heath Internal Audit Scope
We are concerned that such a wide ranging review might overlook the key issues, that we covered here and are summarised below:
How did they manage to spend nearly double the revised FY18/19 budget (£90K spend vs £50K approval) without authorisation? As I understand it, this breaches the Constitution.
For FY20/21, why did the budget change so often?
Why did they need to transfer £283K from reserves to cover spending against what ended up being a zero budget? Spending against a zero budget and/or spending over the original £167K budget without authorisation is surely also a breach of the Constitution.
We also ask whether it is appropriate a Cabinet member to sponsor an audit of a project that he himself was responsible for.
CCH U-Turn on Shapley Heath Internal Audit
This is a significant U-turn from CCH because previously they have dismissed concerns about the financial controls surrounding the project.
Most recently, Councillor Radley dismissed our question as “disingenuous”, even as he described continued spending on a project that is supposedly cancelled. Spending was reported as £81K at the end of September. Now it’s up to £92.5K, and is expected to rise to over £135K by the end of March.
Questions about Shapley Heath Financial Controls are Disingenuous
It does seem odd that they should spend nearly all of the budget when they terminated the project in October. This is only around half way through the financial year. He even got his statement wrong. The latest version of the budget shows New Settlement spending is set at £149K.
HASETT – Shapley Heath Final Budget FY21-22
Councillor Axam, CCH Chair of the Audit Committee said he didn’t recognise some of our figures when we asked him a question about them at the September meeting.
We raised concerns about the budgeting and financial controls surrounding the Shapley Heath project as part of the objection we raised against the accounts. Previously, Mr Radley has described the objection to the accounts as ill-founded.
A new announcement was made at Council on Thursday, in response to one of our questions. They announced that the new 5-year land supply shows Hart has over 10 years of land supply. Not only that, the Housing Delivery Test will be met up to around 2028. Their whole justification for pursuing Shapley Heath in the first place was as an “insurance policy”.
Unfortunately, we were unable to be at the meeting, even remotely. However, the Chairman agreed to read out our questions for us. The announcement and questions are shown below, with short video clips of the answers. They covered:
5-Year land supply announcement
A request for an outline of the activities and timescales for the Local Plan review
Demanding a specific date for the publication of the Shapley Heath survey
Asking for the cost savings arising from stopping the Shapley Heath project early
A question about the costs of having two joint-CEOs, compared to other councils that share CEOs and senior management teams.
There’s another clip of Councillor Kinnell flouncing out of the meeting after being asked some straightforward questions about the Dog Warden service.
5-Year Land Supply Blows Shapley Heath Out of the Water
Here is the announcement about the 5-year land supply:
The key points to note are that the Housing Delivery Test will be met until at least 2028 and Hart has 10 years of land supply. The full document can be found here.
Q1: Local Plan Review Activities and Timelines
Hart needs a revised Local Plan in place by five years from adoption, which is April 2025. Various steps will need to be completed such as Examination and various consultations. The Council will also need to find sites to meet the housing delivery test and make adjustments resulting from new household projections due to be published in 2023. The Inspector also said that “appropriate and proportionate area/site assessments [and] viability testing would need to be done in an impartial manner”. Can you sketch out the broad activities and timelines required to meet the April 2025 deadline?
The answer is shown in the video below.
We think the Council has got its head in the sand, because the National Planning Policy Guidance is fairly clear that Local Plans need to be reviewed every five years. If there is any ambiguity, surely it would be prudent to plan for the worst case scenario. We are reminded of the aphorism, failure to plan is to plan to fail.
Local Plan Review Guidance: land Supply Blows Shapley Heath out of the Water
Q2: Shapley Heath Survey Results
At the September Council meeting we were promised that the Shapley Heath survey results were going to be published “in full” (subject to GDPR check) “shortly”. Most reasonable people would have expected “shortly” to mean within a couple of weeks. They are still being kept secret, with a vague commitment to publish sometime in the New Year. Can you give a precise deadline for when these important results will be made available to the taxpayers of Hart who paid for the survey?
The answer is shown in the video below:
We can now expect the survey to be published on 13 December. However, they leave the door open to later publication if they have not received other surveys. However, there are no other surveys, just baseline studies many of which have been completed for some time.
Q3: Financial Benefits of Terminating Shapley Heath
Back in September we were promised a “a business case for the cost benefit analysis of starting to commence the preparation for the next local plan review”. Subsequent papers have been notable because they contained no costs and no benefits of stopping Shapley Heath and changing course. Are we to assume that all of the FY21/22 budget for Shapley Heath has been spent already, despite the project being terminated early, and so no savings will be made, or is this just another example of weak financial controls?
The answer is shown in the video below.
It seems that Councillor Radley thinks our question is disingenuous, because there are no examples of weak financial controls. First, he says that the full year outturn is going to be £135K against a budget (after the £130K Government grant) of £149K. It seems odd that they have spent most of the budget in just over half the year. Even odder that they are continuing to spend money on a project that’s been stopped.
As you know, Hart is facing a significant structural budget deficit for the foreseeable future. The Level 1 and Level 2 savings identified so far do not fill the financial black hole. Nearby East Hampshire and Havant councils get along fine with just one CEO and senior management team shared between them. Yet Hart, one of the smallest local authorities in the country, has two CEOs. What actions are you taking to ensure this shameful waste of taxpayers’ money does not continue?
The answer is shown in the video below:
At least the Councillor Neighbour has moved on from insisting the budget is balanced. But he seems to have his head in the sand about the costs of Hart’s senior leadership. We covered leadership costs here, where we showed that Hart’s leadership team cost over £540K per annum, whereas the combined team for Havant and East Hampshire is £333K. His comparison of staff paid over £50K is likely distorted by different levels of outsourcing.
Councillor Neighbour challenged our claim that Hart was one of the smallest local authorities. He said there were 64 authorities smaller than Hart. There’s 333 local authorities in England. This puts Hart into the smallest quintile of authorities. This means that 80% of local authorities are larger than Hart; we think that makes Hart one of the smallest.
Councillor Kinnell Flounces Out
We could not leave out the scene of Councillor Sara Kinnell flouncing out of the meeting after fielding a fairly innocuous question about dog wardens.
This isn’t the first time we have seen dramatic behaviour from Councillor Kinnell. If she can’t cope with fairly innocuous questions, then it might be better for her health if she reconsiders her position as a Cabinet member.
There’s a disturbing trend in Hart Council. Deadlines are being missed. Long standing meetings are being postponed. The finances are still not under control. These things all point to a Council that is out of control. In summary:
Audit Committee Postponed
Medium Term finances still in deficit, despite savings being identified
Missing 5-year Land Supply
CIL proposal based on unpublished Infrastructure Plan
No progress on elements of the Local Development Scheme
Shapley Heath Deliverables Remain unpublished
Let’s look at the detail.
Audit Committee Postponed
An Audit Committee meeting was supposed to take place this week, but it has been postponed. This meeting was an important one; the purpose was to receive the audit letter and auditor’s report.
Hart Council Out of Control Audit Committee Postponed
Hart Council Out of Control Medium Term Finances still in deficit
Hart Council Out of Control: Missing 5-year land supply
At O&S on 21 September, we were assured that the updated 5-year land supply was on track for delivery by the end of September. However, at last week’s O&S this had been pushed back to Christmas. It is very strange for something that was on track to be delivered within 9 days should suddenly suffer a three month delay. This is indicative of poor internal management and control.
5 year land supply on track end of September
5 year land supply pushed back to Christmas
CIL paper based on unpublished Infrastructure Delivery Plan
At last week’s O&S they discussed a proposed CIL charging schedule. The funding gap that the CIL is supposed to help close was based on an as yet unpublished Infrastructure Delivery Plan (IDP). This identifies a funding gap of £57.9m.
Hart Council Infrastructure Funding Gap of £58m
However, the latest published IDP came out around the time of the Local Plan. This showed a funding gap of £72.3m, but this did not include Social and Extra Care nor Countryside schemes. In fact many of the items on the IDP were un-costed and have no funding, to the real gap was even wider.
Hart Council Infrastructure Funding Gap of £72m
We should be able to scrutinise the new paper to see how the gap has miraculously fallen by ~£14m and whether the figures are realistic.
No Progress on Local Development Scheme
Back in 2019, the Council produced a Local Development Scheme. This sets out the timelines for delivery of all elements of the Local Plan and other development documents.
A DPD for Traveller sites was supposed to have been submitted to Government in June of this year. Nothing has happened. There was supposed to be a Development Management DPD consultation in June of this year. Nothing has happened. Instead they carried out the survey about the totally unnecessary Shapley Heath project.
Local Development Scheme Deadlines Missed
The simply cannot keep wasting time effort and our money on vanity project while they fail to produce key documents that are required.
Shapley Heath survey and baseline studies not yet published
Of course, the results of the Shapley Heath survey and Baseline Studies still haven’t been published. This is despite Councillor Cockarill promising that they would be published “very shortly” at the last Council meeting on 30th September. indeed he noted that if they hadn’t paused the project, the results would have been published to the Opportunity Board in September.
Some of the Baseline Studies were due to be published to the Opportunity Board originally scheduled for July 2021. They still haven’t been published. The current status is ambiguous, with some statements saying they will be “published promptly” and others saying we need to wait until the New Year.
Hart Council Out of Control
In addition, of course our green waste has not been collected for weeks on end. Overall, this paints an alarming picture of failure, obfuscation and secrecy. This cannot be allowed to continue.
We have good news. At Cabinet on Thursday the Cabinet agreed to create a business case to review the Local Plan. An immediate consequence of this is that all work on the Shapley Heath Project will be paused. We should view this as minor victory as it is almost certain they will retain Shapley Heath as an option in the Local Plan review.
It is clear that the announcement caused them some distress because Councillor Radley’s statement was virtually unintelligible. It included the words:
We should look to generate a business case for the cost benefit analysis of starting to commence the preparation for the next local plan review. A new settlement can continue to be investigated along with other options such as urban intensification as part of the LP.
If the Government sticks to its prior guidance on Planning Reform, a review of the Local Plan will be a mandatory requirement. So it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the Local Plan review will go ahead.
It was left to Councillor Cockarill at the meeting to make clear that the consequence of this decision will be to pause the existing Shapley Heath project. The full discussion at Cabinet can be seen on the video below:
Shapley Heath Paused: Campaign Impact
It is always difficult to know exactly what impact our campaign has on the Council. However, we will claim some credit for this outbreak of common sense.
We called for a review of the Local Plan back in January. It’s taken 8 months, but finally they have taken some notice.
We have of course highlighted the level of spending on Shapley Heath on many occasions recently.
There’s good news, bad news and some downright ugly news in the latest Medium Term Financial Strategy reported to Overview and Scrutiny. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.
Hart Financial Black Hole Gets Bigger – Updated Medium Term Financial Strategy
The projected deficits have risen since last reported in July in the Statement of Accounts. The deficit for FY22/23 has risen from £1,175K to £1,214K. In FY23/24 the deficit is now projected at £1,569K, up from £1,413K.
Hart Council MTFS Statement of Accounts July 2021
Analysis of the differences shows some worrying trends.
Hart MTFS Comparison
Commercial income for each of those years has grown by over £700K. In addition, they are also forecasting higher New Homes Bonus receipts and more grants. Income from Council Tax and Business Rates is virtually unchanged. However, the extra income is more than offset by ballooning costs.
Hart Financial Black Hole: Good News
The good news is that the Council are starting to get to grips with the problem and have started to identify savings. So far, they have identified two levels of saving. Level 1 is apparently relatively easy, and if they manage to implement all of their ideas they will save £335K per year. However, we don’t think spending saved grant money or capitalising expenditure are real savings.
Level One Savings
If they manage to implement the Level 2 savings, they would achieve a further £467K of savings each year.
Level Two Savings
This is a welcome first step. However, even if they implement all of the identified savings, they total up to only £802K. This is much less than the deficits in each year. So, there’s still a very long way to go to balance the budget.
Hart Financial Black Hole: Ugly News
The ugly news is that cutting the disastrous Shapley Heath project doesn’t even feature as a potential saving. That’s right, the Council finances are sinking into the abyss, but they still plan to carry on squandering more and more of our money on a totally unnecessary project.
The other ugly news is that they are now projecting a surplus for this financial year of £117K. If that sounds odd, read on. On the face of it, this is a big improvement on the £381K deficit assumed in the original budget. The surplus comes because they are now going to receive extra commercial income from the office block they recently purchased in Basingstoke. This is weird because the projection conveniently ignores the £776K adverse variance they (almost) reported in the Full Year forecast paper presented to the same meeting. They are dressing up a deteriorating deficit as a surplus. It seems they can show only good news in the MTFS and totally ignore the bad news. Another ugly, shambolic financial report.
The confusing reporting of Hart’s FY21/22 budget continues. The continued obfuscation, coupled with an insistence that nothing has changed can only be described as gaslighting. Papers covering the outturn for the first quarter of FY21/22 have recently been considered by Overview and Scrutiny.
The first thing that jumps out of the page is the inaccurate statement 4.2 which says, “The forecast position for expenditure as of 30th June 2021 was a variance to Budget of £2.7m”. The actuals for Q1 do show a favourable variance of £2.7m. However, the forecast full year outturn is an unfavourable variance of £776K, a fact not mentioned in the entire report.
You have to work hard to find that variance. In the table showing the comparison between budget and actual, they have omitted the total line. So, you have to add it up yourself. Below is the table as presented in the paper, together with our analysis that includes a total line. Most of the adverse variance is due to loss of income in the Leisure contract. The £470K positive variance in Community Services is unexplained. The smaller adverse variances in the other service areas are also unexplained.
Overview and Scrutiny Aug 21 Table 1.1
Hart Budget Gaslighting: Q1 Full Year Forecast
The next thing that jumps out they have chosen to present the “Original” budget in a new way. This makes it impossible to compare it to prior versions like-for like. A new line called “Accounting Treatment”, amounting to over £1.5m has miraculously appeared. This is extra income, presumably from reserves, to offset the additional spending that was not included in the original version of the budget. Here are the changes in graphical form.
Hart Budget Gaslighting: FY21-22 Budget Changes Since February 2021
We’re Not Changing the Budget
However, Councillor James “Rhetoric” Radley insisted that nothing had changed in the budget:
However, he admitted at July questions that changes have been made to account for depreciation, SANG spending and additional Government grants. He failed to mention that the Waste Client Team net income budget has fallen £52K and the budgets for Corporate Communications (+£19.5K) and Register of Electors (+£17K) have higher spending even though they are not affected his explanation.
Hart Budget Gaslighting: Accounting Treatment
When you delve into the depths of “Accounting Treatment”, things get even murkier. The first item of note is that £667K of income from interest on investments and property rental income has been moved “above the line”. Councillor Radley declared this in the actuals for FY18/19 and 19/20, but somehow forgot to disclose it for the current year.
Changes to HAZFEN: Commercial Income
CCH Rhetoric Awards Q1 Written Answer
Then, there’s an extra £1m transferred from reserves, presumably to cover SANG expenditure. Plus nearly £0.5m more to cover depreciation charges. In addition, there’s a previously undisclosed £1m for pension contributions.
Changes to Accounting Treatment Items Pensions and Reserves
Of course, the total employment costs have changed in both directions across the different version so the budget too.
Hart Budget Gaslighting Employment Cost Changes
If they look like changes to the budget and smell like changes to the budget, they probably are changes to the budget. To forcefully deny that anything has changed is simply gaslighting the public.
