Each year normally in the January main meeting Barkham Parish Council sets out and agrees it’s spending plans for the following financial year. The current plan can be seen here.
Parish raise revenue to help meet their spending requirements by issuing a ‘Precept’. This is the total amount to be raised through the council tax from all the dwellings within the parish area. The ‘Precept’ is converted into an amount per council tax Band that is added onto the council tax bill.
The parish council notifies Wokingham Borough Council of the amount of the amount of their precept each year and the council collects this money on their behalf.
The precept may be less or more than the expenditure for that year depending on deposits and audit requirements for those deposits. The levels of unallocated funding have followed the auditors of the Parish Council’s annual accounts recommendation that the council maintain a higher level of unallocated reserves than had hitherto been the case, together with the Council’s identification of a greater contingency provision.
Best practice suggests that reserve funds are set at 25% of overall expenditure and that contingency funds should make provision for asset replacement and legal dispute provision. The latter being of particular significance given the unprecedented level of development in progress in and around Barkham Parish, where the professional costs of any challenges would be considerable, and failure to make adequate provision could leave the residents unrepresented.
To that end where savings, if any, have been made in previous accounting periods these have been passed on, unallocated, for use as reserve and contingency funding.
Barkham Parish Council has progressively made our reserves more robust, without substantially increasing the annual charge to each household. We envisage this will be accepted by the majority of Barkham residents as a prudent policy.
Actual expenditure is considered and agreed at each Main Meeting and can be seen in the Minutes of that meeting.
Documents for Financial Year ending March 2020 and the precept for the following year (previous years available in
the Accounts section of the Document Archive). Please note that these documents are only published after the end of the Financial Year after they have been audited and approved, usually several months later.
Income and Expenditure for 22/23
Auditors Report for 22/23
Internal Audit Report YE March 2023
Regulation 121b Monitoring Report CIL Income/Expenditure YE March 2023
Budget and Precept 2023-2024 – PDF File
Budget and Precept 2023-2024 – Excel File