Wrexham Council accounts to 31 March 2013
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Interesting reading:
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/financial/statement_of_accs_1213.pdf
For those wanting to view Page 16 without craning their necks here it is rotated for ease of use – click for bigger readable version!
The lower ones are ~2-3% increases , detailing £90,000 pa jobs to £135k pa jobs – totalling roughly £1,159,403 of pay over 13 jobs.
There is also detail on P26 for a loan just over £100,000 to a commercial body.
This is stated as “The loan to Commercial Body was to part-fund the development of a hotel on the Wrexham Technology Park, and was advanced in December 2005, at a fixed rate of interest. It is repayable over 20 years, with the first repayment in December 2006. The repayments during the first five years are interest only, with the principal, together with the remaining interest, being repaid over the subsequent fifteen years.”
I would guess that is the Ramada?
A very interesting read , page 13 states that the Council had sundry debtors to,the value of £4.45 million as of the 31 March 2013. I presume this includes the housing rent arrears mentioned on page 62 up from £856,000 last year to £1,054,000 as of 31st March 2013. These are substantial sums of money especially when seen in the context of possible service cuts because of a reduced grant from the Welsh Assembly. The problem facing the Council is how do you make people pay their debts?
Loads of interesting points to hear about from councillors themselves eg:
Children’s and Education Services in the last year was £146,372,000; and this year £132,284,000. Down £14m!!!
£27m seems to go on central services, democratic core and other operating expenditure. What is all this, is it all needed.
A number of lines of expenditure are up, when the published plan sought to reduce them, why?
Non domestic rates income is still £20m less a year than it use to be.
These forums certainly are read – two councillors have referred to figures in this doc and now a press release about them , could be a coincidence though!
Will pop it here as its relevant, but it would be good if those reading joined in the debate direct! ;)
Plaid Cymru Councillor Arfon Jones has called on Wrexham Council to address the top-heavy management structure in the council to contribute to the massive savings the council has to make.
Cllr Jones, who represents Gwersyllt West, said: “We have one Chief Executive, three Strategic Directors and nine Chief Officers earning a combined total of £1.38 million a year in 2012/13 which is an increase of 4.5% on the previous year, with the lowest paid getting over £93,000 and the Chief Executive on a whopping £135,000. It begs the question if we have nine Chief Officers responsible for their departments then why do we need three Strategic Directors?”
Cllr Jones went on to point out that, over the last two years, a total of a 151 staff had left the authority with an ‘exit package’. More than a third of all staff that left with packages were made compulsory redundant with nearly all of them receiving an exit package of less than £20,000, indicating that they were low-paid staff in the main.
There were no compulsory redundancies for staff entitled to exit packages over £40,000.
Cllr Jones added: “What these figures show is that we are quick enough to dispose with our lower-paid frontline staff but the managers remain. It will be interesting to see a breakdown of the pay grades of the 368 staff that have volunteered for early voluntary redundancy or retirement and whether the council will let senior staff go.”
The accounts tell the story about all the revenue that comes into the ‘County’, and all the money the ‘County’ spends. The community are the ‘owners’ of the ‘County’!
It is a coincidence! I sit on the Audit Committee and have had access to these accounts since June. They have been discussed in two Audit Committees, one in June and again end of September, both open meetings. The accounts are then signed off after the September meeting. The Press Release was not therefore issued as a result of you publishing the accounts as a Wrexham.com forum topic.
With WCBC and councillors reading these forums, and with very genuine issues and very genuine resolutions being raised in these forums; surely it is a reasonable place to expect democratically elected or appointed people to ENGAGE and CONSULT and DEBATE issues within the community? This electronic publication, is as representative of community interests as is any other daily or weekly publication that’s been out there for a very long time . . . surely it would be good to see facts and proposals being posted and reported . . . the ‘open meetings’ of the Council are for a closed few in attendance?
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