The service is responsible for:

• providing a high quality financial administration and stewardship service including development and co-ordination of the corporate financial framework, medium term financial strategy, prioritising and utilising financial resources to the greatest effect and ensuring that activity and processes comply with professional standards, government regulations, legislation and the council’s constitution and financial regulations.

• Delivery of efficient and effective accountancy, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and treasury management services that enable financial resources to be accurately recorded, monitored and controlled whilst maximising the benefits of reserves and ensuring the Council’s cash flow is sufficient to meet all commitments due

• Providing access to sound and timely financial advice on policy and strategic issues and development of financial management competencies of budget holders

• Ensuring that effective systems and processes are in place for the efficient delivery of services.

• Managing the Lambeth local Government Pension Scheme for the benefit of all members and participating employers, ensuring that the aims and objectives of the scheme are clear and robust, complying with all relevant legislation and regulations. Responsible for the oversight and direction of pension fund investments within the scope of the funding and investment strategies of the Fund, maximising returns but balanced with due consideration of ESG and responsible investment principles. Total value of investments currently in excess of £1,800m.

The Assistant Directors of Finance and their teams will be refocused to better align with the current Council structure. It is important that there is a clear relationship with service directors to ensure a clear channel of communication between the service and the finance teams. The service will focus on enabling and empowering the organisation to manage their own day-to-day finances, as well as increasing their financial resilience across transaction services and budget monitoring. Teams and their roles will be updated to reflect the change in focus from transaction processing to value added and decision support activities. The service will also focus on improving data transparency and help services to better understand their finances, it’s environment and enable better business decision making through understanding, analysing, interpreting, challenging, reporting and providing advice on data and trends impacting on the business. It will provide connection between data and services, making optimum use of the expertise within the Performance and Business Improvement division, including the newly established Commercial and Advisory Services. Improving the current approach is being proposed, which is not only aimed at providing more targeted support for each directorate and a better understanding of the specialties that each service needs but also has the familiarity required to build trusting business relationships aimed at providing closer support to the service as well as supporting a more consistent delivery approach tailored to the needs of the service

Our proposal is to provide a financial management support service for schools to assist school governors, and leaders and head teachers  to make good resource management decisions by ensuring that they understand and accurately report their financial position. It is proposed to  establish a Schools Finance Support manager, and then consider expansion based on take-up of service offer and funding through income generation. Ensuring that schools have expert advice has become increasingly important  as schools are experiencing falling rolls which is putting pressure on many schools  to reduce spending to balance their budget. There are examples locally ,where a third-party financial support partner, engaged by a school,  has either failed to assist in putting reasonable recovery plans in place or in identifying  that the financial position is in danger of spiralling downwards. Additional scrutiny introduced by the DfE which  will be examining Local Authorities that have more than 10% of schools with a revenue balance deficit of 10%, has put further pressure  on the need to support schools. Finally, the current Government Academies program creates the risk of Lambeth deficit schools’ balances being left for the LA to fund if and when  they convert to Academy status.

The main aims of our commissioned service are:

• To ensure schools have access to good quality advice,  support and training on school financial management

• To provide an example  of good practice, providing a professional service to schools  and meeting their needs 

• To implement a proactive and preventative approach of supporting and challenging the financial plans of governing bodies

• Robust procedures for systematically monitoring every school's financial position, with appropriate involvement of School Improvement colleagues.

• To ensure schools develop credible recovery plans, especially those heading for a deficit

•  reduce the number of schools carrying a ‘Licensed’ deficit

• To avoid school deficits carried on the Council’s balance sheet being written off by the school if they convert to an Academy

• To provide a service that builds up its client base and at least covers the costs of the buy-back elements within 12 months.

• To reduce the risk of additional scrutiny by DfE, who will be examining LAs that have more than 10% of schools with a revenue balance deficit of 10%

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