Liberal Democrats call for better control of Surrey County Council's money.

5.30.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 21st Jul 2009

Liberal Democrats at Surrey County Council have called for improvements in the way the County Council plans and prepares its budget. They criticised the Conservative administration for its unrealistic and short-term approach to budget setting, which has resulted in some council services underspending - whilst others overspend their budgets, year after year.

Liberal Democrat Leader, Cllr Hazel Watson, said: "The County Council's budget planning produces an unrealistic budget. This leads to significant overspends and underspends, for example in 2008/09 Children Services overspent by £14m and the back office budget was underspent by £1.7m"

Criticising these major discrepancies she added: "The budget should be properly planned to give value for money to Surrey's residents. Large overspends result in restricted spending on services, whilst underspends mean that money is not being spent by services that most need it. The same budgets are overspent and underspent every year. This is a longstanding problem that must be addressed."

Cllr Diana Smith, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Schools and Learning said: "The process for setting the overspent 2008/09 Children Services budget was faulty from the start. Unachievable assumptions were made to reach the required figures, for example that there would be no use of expensive agency staff to cover vacancies."

"We were warned that there was a risk to service targets, and this was sadly proved true by the appalling findings of the Government Inspectors who found Surrey's Children Services 'inadequate'. We need a fundamental change in approach to make sure issues are not fudged this way again."