Decision - Financial Management Code - Self Assessment

Brighton and Hove Audit & Standards Committee Decided 27 Jun 2023 approved GET /api/coverage

Decision maker

Audit & Standards Committee

Report author

Nigel Manvell

Published

12 Jul 2023

Reference

6964

As published

the council's own words, unedited

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy has issued a Financial Management Code (FM Code) outlining 6 core principles for good practice. Authorities are required to assess compliance with the Code and identify improvement actions where necessary.

1) That the Audit & Standards Committee note the authority's self-assessment against the Financial Management Code and the identified improvement actions set out in Appendix 2.

Parsed from the document

gpt-5.6-luna-2026-07-09 · 15699/2095 tokens · 15627ms · parsed 9 Sep 2026 12:04

Everything below was read out of a PDF by a model It is useful and it is not authoritative. The document it came from is linked in the rail, and where the two disagree the document is right.

The report presents BHCC’s detailed self-assessment against the CIPFA Financial Management Code. It finds substantial or partial compliance across the standards and identifies actions to strengthen value for money, financial sustainability, medium-term planning, capital programme management, governance and stakeholder engagement.

Recommendation

To implement the identified improvement actions, including developing responses to LGA and peer-review findings, improving financial and capital planning, strengthening reserves and savings monitoring, reviewing the Finance function, refreshing the Asset Management Plan, improving business-case gateways and reporting, and enhancing partnership and stakeholder engagement.

Financial impact

The authority has faced annual budget gaps and savings requirements of £10m to £20m since 2010, including substantial £10m+ savings programmes; a 1.3% overspend of net budget (£3m) was forecast for 2022/23.

Ward affected

city-wide

Stakeholders named

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BHCC membersExecutive Leadership TeamFinance functionbudget managerscontract managersresidents and service usersstaff and unionsNHS partnerscommunity and voluntary sectorexternal auditorlocal authority peer organisations

Next steps

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Develop and agree responses to LGA Deep Dives, peer reviews, external auditor recommendations and other reviews.
Improve medium-term financial planning and integrate capital, revenue and invest-to-save planning with service plans and the Corporate Plan.
Develop a stronger gateway and governance process for capital investments and improve capital programme performance reporting.
Review and refresh the Asset Management Plan.
Strengthen savings planning, including contingency and over-programming, and improve assessment of savings deliverability.
Consider an independent review of the Finance function.
Improve balance-sheet risk reporting and escalate significant risks at least quarterly.
Strengthen partnership working and stakeholder engagement, including revitalising the Local Strategic Partnership and developing a new Corporate Plan.
Review the Annual Governance Statement against CIPFA good-governance guidance.

Precedents

not built

"Decided elsewhere" is not built Finding the same decision in other councils needs semantic matching over decision text, which is part of the search rewrite. Until then, the council's own decisions list is the way through.