Richard Baum

Last night was a meeting of the Council’s Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission. I am the Lib Dem spokespweson on this group, which is a cross-party collection of Councillors meeting half a dozen (or so) times a year to scrutinise the work of the Council’s Executive in their management of Council performance and finance.

The major issue of the evening was a review of Local Area Partnerships (LAPs). I have written more about this below.

Aside from LAPs, there was a presentation on the Council’s Comprehensive Performance Assessment action plan. This was mainly fine, and there has been good progress made in implementing some of the recommendations highlighted when the Council was inspected last year.

The Director of Finance talked about the Council’s asset management strategy, which was also fine and outlines how we’re going to manage public buildings in the future.

And there was good news at the end of the meeting - There are some potential revenue savings that the Council can make! Unfortunately it’s not from making services more efficient or from getting more money from the government. No, these savings arise from a new capital accounting fudge which we can now exploit! The savings generated are good news, but really, when you think about it, what a ridiculous world we live in where a change in book-keeping regulations means all of a sudden the Council is richer than it was five minutes ago.

Crazy stuff. The meeting was over at 8.45, just in time for me to watch the second half of City v Alalborg and see us miss more chances than I am entirely comfortable with.

Rick