JARGON-FILLED reports from officials can impact on the ability of councillors to effectively scrutinise local government borrowing, a report has found.
The Accounts Commission has called for better training and support for elected officials responsible for examining local authority finances.
Councils currently have total debt of £14.8 billion, of which £12.1 billion (82 per cent) is from borrowing, with just over half of local authorities increasing their borrowing levels over the last decade.
The report found that while councils are meeting professional requirements, they are not doing enough to analyse and report on the long-term implications of borrowing to fund capital expenditure such as new schools and roads.
Officials must present information more clearly and fully to councillors with a scrutiny role, the Accounts Commission said.
"Officers must use accessible language when reporting on borrowing and treasury management but many strategies and reports contain a lot of technical language," it said.
"This does not help councillors scrutinise effectively as any questions they ask are more likely about clarity rather than challenge."
The report added: "Some councils are not presenting councillors with all the relevant information at one time to support borrowing decisions, for example in the treasury management strategy.
"This is important to ensure that decisions made are based on an assessment of all the relevant analysis and risks."
Concerns were also raised about the ability of some elected officials to properly scrutinise council finances.
"We found councillors' experience varied, for example from councillors who had been accountants or finance directors to those with little or no previous finance experience," the report said.
"This is a complex and technical subject and officers need to provide wider training and support to councillors, and also provide clearer, more accessible reports."
Douglas Sinclair, chair of the Accounts Commission, said: "This is a critical part of council business which requires close and effective scrutiny, particularly in times like this when budgets are so tight.
"We hope this report will help councillors and officers make improvements through clearer information and wider analysis of options so that they can be confident that their borrowing policies deliver best value in the longer term."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article