Devolving power to committee level.

Question

Devolving power to spend to the individual committees, with only a recognition of Committee minutes at Full council does this leave the council open to risk.

Answer 1

This is an interesting question as I recently had a bad experience with this aspect of PC finances. It appears with my Council  that some budgets are devolved to individual Committees but with a final authorisation check performed by Finance with "in between " advice from the Clerk . The problem with that is it can take weeks to authorise.  In my case the verbally agreed by Committee Chairman  repayment of some expenses was overruled because no formal prior authority to proceed was obtained. In the real world the budget holder be able to do this but I guess with public money its different?

Answer 2

If the expenditure is identified on the budget for that committee, the authority should really be with the committee to spend that money on the item in question.  Model financial regulations do limit the amount of money committees can spend - in our case, all expenditure over £5000 has to be formally approved by Full Council.  All payments have to be presented to the Full Council too for approval which is a second line of monitoring spend.

There is always risk but checks and balances should be in place in order to mitigate it.