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The truths they don't want you to read....

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Managing the public cash

The Council has many different sources of income, so of which it earns, so of which comes as automatic grants and some of which it has to request.

It's not rocket science to have a list of tasks which includes VAT Returns every quarter, PAYE every month and claim for grants A-Z on whatever cycle makes sense.

Some of these claims are annually, others monthly, others when something passes a milestone.

Why then, have claims for 2010/11 not been lodged for the Fuel Duty rebate that the council gets for every mile that the buses run, or for the subsidy that the Council gets from the Scottish Government for running the public bus services?

I'm told that the unclaimed amounts are in the region of £150,000, and whilst it only (only! hah) affects cash flow, it shows a lack of focus on what should be being done by rote.

[The solution will probably be to employ another member of staff, rather than to deal with the underlying omission]

Perhaps someone on the Finance Committee or on the Commercial Operations (sic) Board might like to ask what else hasn't been done - I have a list - and why not?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can we also guess then that claims for PAYE, VAT etc are also lingering?

By the way, if the council is shelling out cash without getting it back from central government, what additional interest (if any) are they paying on our behalf?

Anonymous said...

How are they doing with paying suppliers' bills - particularly small suppliers ?

Hairy McLairy said...

They're actually quite good at paying small suppliers these days - my business deals with them about every six weeks for amounts of up to £200 and they respond within about a fortnight with an electronic payment.

But it does depend on which department you're dealing with. If the department itself sits on the invoice it can take an age.

Anonymous said...

2:47 "claims for PAYE" What planet are you on. PAYE only takes from you. No prospect of claiming anything from them I'm afraid.....

Anonymous said...

11.09


LOL - it was a bad Sunday.


;-))))