To work effectively, East Sussex County Council needs a clear understanding of its future priorities and finances. We constantly analyse our business to make sure that we meet our key priorities and objectives with the resources we have.
How we plan for the future
Identifying key priorities
Our main tool to assist the Council in identifying key policy priorities is a process called "Reconciling Policy, Performance and Resources”. This helps to develop our plans and budgets together:
Setting out our plans
The Council Plan is our most important business planning tool. It sets out our priorities for the next three years with clear targets for achievement. This is published by 1 April each year:
How we decide what's in the Council Plan
The main points of the Council Plan are known as 'policy steers':
These are based on the political priorities of the Council and take into account:
- past performance and areas we know need improving
- how legislation will affect the services we must provide
- the findings of Best Value and scrutiny reviews
- opinions of residents and businesses we have consulted with
- the limited resources we have.
How our priorities are reflected in the budget
As part of the Reconciling Policy and Resources process, the Council Plan and budgets are developed together.
To help this process the Council has developed a medium-term financial plan covering the next three years. Before policy steers are finalised, we must make sure that we have the money to carry them out. To work out what money we need and what we have, we take the following information into account:
- the amount of money we would need to provide services in the future in exactly the same way as now
- the cost of any new services that we must provide during the next financial year
- other risks and pressures
- expected grants from central government.
We then prepare our budget and allocate money to individual policy areas, so that the plan and budget can be agreed before the financial year starts on 1 April.
East Sussex County Council