December and January are always busy months for town and parish councils, to set their budget for the following year, and decide what tax (precept) they will charge the public for the services they offer. Whitby Town Council (WTC) has burned through 2 full time clerks, 1 locum clerk, and 1 deputy clerk in the last year and a half. They currently have a locum clerk and an assistant clerk to perform this budget setting process.
It is considered proper practice to publish all supporting documents to council meetings on the council website three full days before a meeting (as well as to circulate the same documents directly to councillors). This gives councillors and public the necessary time to digest and think of questions to understand it better. Needless to say this has not been happening. WTC has not published supporting documents for its meetings for the vast majority of the last 18 months. Whilst councillors may have been receiving the documents, often that is with maybe an hours notice – hardly conducive to making good decisions. The proposed budget for 2026-2027 has also never been published on the website.
The Proposed WTC Budget Spreadsheet
We managed to get our hands on what purports to be the proposed 2026-2027 budget (still to be approved by WTC councillors). It took the form of a spreadsheet, though we have to question the level of spreadsheet skills of the author(s) of this document having looked at it.
You can find it HERE.
Comments
- The standard spreadsheet concept of having all things in a row as relating to each other is lost here. We have the first 2 columns seemingly from the 2025-2026 budget, yet they do not align with all subsequent columns which are for different “cost centres” (Budget Heading is the term that WTC seem to use).
- We have columns H-L as seeming alternatives to the 2026-2027 budget, yet the values are either not filled in, or are the same. Any document should be self explanatory, and these columns are not.
- The reader cannot compare how well a Cost Centre has been managed during 2025-2026 when comparing against budget … because the budget is not provided.
- We have columns “to date” and “revised projected” for 2025-2026, but the “revised projected” for many Cost Centres seems to just jump up to the budgeted number with no obvious reason why.
- If a Cost Centre is significantly differing from budget there is no explanation column, so consequently no understanding of whether there was a problem in the previous budget, or in the management of that item.
- There is no statement of what the WTC Reserves are. A council should hold a minimum of 25% of expenditure in reserves (so that should mean at least £140k). In 2024 the external auditor instructed WTC that they should consider the reserves explicitly when setting their budget. They did that to a degree for 2025-2026, but that is seemingly ignored for 2026-2027.
Reminder : this is what is being put in front of councillors when asking them to approve it, making a decision over the spend of going on for £600k!
We can only describe it as utterly inadequate. In its content, and in its lack of publication. Good decision making cannot be made like this. WTC councillors really ought to be demanding better information.
An Improved WTC Budget Spreadsheet
We took the encountered spreadsheet and updated primarily its format in the interests of councillors and the public having something more legible to base sound(er) financial decision making on.
You can find our version HERE.
Our changes are as follows
- Removed the first 2 columns of whatever it was.
- Split the columns into 3 groups – cost centre, 2025-2026, and 2026-2027. Note that we have not changed any numbers in these columns, simply adding a column for 2025/2026 budget.
- Added clear distinction between INCOME and EXPENDITURE.
- Moved the Precept calculation (EXPENDITURE – INCOME) to the end, since it is calculated and that is the only logical place to put it.
- Changed the different variants of proposed budget in the WTC proposed spreadsheet to reflect different options of increasing the reserves, so it is clear what they are for.
- We also included the resultant Band D precept (that residents would pay) for each of those options, and the % increase.
We hope that this is clearer, but without further info from the council it is hard to improve it beyond that.
Note that we do not know what reserves the council has, hence we cannot make recommendations. But then, from what we can gather councillors also do not know what reserves the council has! Frankly appalling really.
We would ask what does a resident actually get for their precept? – very little actually. Toilets for the visitor which are loss making (subsidised) currently?, access to a subsidised art gallery?, a Christmas market and some fairy lights?, one of the very few allotments they manage?, a website with next to no information?, paying for the East Pier footbridge that should have come out of harbour funds. Answers on a postcard what else there is …
The Future
A new town clerk takes up the role on 19th January. He will be presented with this proposed budget to present to councillors on his first or second day! Given that WTC legally do not need to send it to North Yorkshire Council until the start of March (even though NYC say they need it by late January), it would be best to give the new clerk the chance to digest what is being set so that he can add his own input and then get it approved. We wish him well.
One thing that he does need to do though is to ensure that the public have access to all council information via the website, unlike what has been happening for way to long (minutes that are impossible to find, no supporting documents or financial info, and so on). Contempt for the public has to end.
