London Borough of Bromley revenue budgeting process

'Because decision conferencing is such a structured way of looking at issues and objectives against agreed criteria, it allows a more open way of making choices.'

David Bartlett
Borough Treasurer and Deputy Chief Executive

Introduction

With the next round of revenue budgeting approaching, London Borough of Bromley were looking for a structured way of assessing and prioritising resource allocation across services.

Following a pilot International Computers Limited (ICL) decision workshop in the leisure department, Bromley decided to adopt this process on an authority-wide scale to support the revenue budgeting task.

At the same time, the authority decided to develop this decision conferencing capability in-house, so in tandem with the revenue budgeting process, ICL trained in facilitation and analyst skills and supported them in their first year of delivery.

Service delivery

In total, there was a programme of eight departmental workshops and one final consolidation workshop. Each departmental workshop comprised the departmental management team and their financial advisor.

Participants had to prepare a strategy under each of the main service headings from a variety of budgetary options. Each group discussed scenarios of variable amounts of budget (more and less) before making their proposals.

The proposals from each workshop became the input for the final consolidation workshop attended by the leader of the council, committee chairmen, chief executive and treasurer.

At this workshop, the participants considered all the proposals against budget allocation and discussed alternative options in order to build a set of recommendations for formal consideration by spending committees.

In all cases, ICL used a mix of facilitation skills and a computer-based modelling tool to assist the groups in highlighting issues, discussing alternative options and the impact upon the budget within a variety of scenarios.

Results

A package for the 95/96 budget allocation was recommended to the council. Bromley felt that this package more accurately aligned resources to service priorities.

Benefits

A number of benefits were identified by the London Borough of Bromley in using decision conferencing:

• It is a structured way of formulating ideas between various competing demands
  
  
• It increases awareness of problems and issues across the authority and helps to encourage ownership of them
  
  
• An open approach to discussing issues across the authority helps to encourage ownership of them
  
  
• A good team-building exercise as the process helps to create a sense of common purpose
  
  
• Produces better, more acceptable budgets which allow the authority's resources to be employed with maximum effectiveness

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