It was interesting to note than in the financial year 2014/15 Southend Council only managed to achieve spend of 83% of its planned capital budget. Now I know that there is an argument that projects can suffer slippage for many reasons making higher delivery difficult, however this performance is not as against the initial budget set in April 2014 but against the previously amended budget which was set as recently as February 2015!
One of the problems the Council faced over many years was a failure to deliver capital projects efficiently and over the last years of the Conservative Administration great progress was made on this. Senior members of the Administration attended regular meetings of the Capital Board to monitor delivery and hold officers to account when this was not happening. This was linked to regular review and amendment of the budget where required to ensure that effective delivery was maintained.
It appears under Cllr Woodley and his colleagues the Council is slipping back to its bad old ways. 17% slippage between late February and the end of the financial year is hardly impressive and the slippage against the opening year balance was closer to 40%.
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