Supplementary A - London Borough of Hillingdon

8 Use of Resources Judgements │ Theme summaries
Financial management
Theme score: 3
Key findings and conclusions
The Council’s arrangements for compiling its medium term financial strategy
and annual budget are robust and embedded. Budget monitoring is sound
and the Council’s swift response to the recent unexpected shortfall in asylum
seeker funding, demonstrates the effectiveness of its financial management
arrangements. The Council has good arrangements in place for managing its
asset base, including a detailed assessment of backlog maintenance and
replacement of specific assets resulting in savings to the Council.
Improvement opportunities
KLOE 2.1 The Council’s
medium-term financial strategy
(MTFS), budgets and capital
programme are soundly based and
designed to deliver its strategic
priorities.
KLOE 2.2 The Council manages
performance against budgets.
KLOE 2.3 The Council manages
its asset base.
• The next use of resources assessment
will include new criteria. These include
monitoring cash-flow to inform short
and long-term investment decisions
and the communication of the key
messages in the Council’s medium
term financial strategy to staff and
stakeholders, as appropriate.
• Ensure the financial performance of
partnerships is robustly monitored and
linked to outputs.
• Continue to identify operational activity
indicators that are lead indicators of
spend and use these in budget setting
and monitoring.
• Ensure there are clear plans to
address the significant backlog in
asset maintenance of £24m.
• Ensure external benchmarking is
conducted with the results
communicated meaningfully to
stakeholders.
• Ensure there is clear information
available to identify how asset
management has contributed to
addressing identified gaps in property
provision.
• Develop clearer links between asset
management information and relevant
organisational financial information.
London Borough of Hillingdon