We are delighted to announce the winners of the Public Finance Awards 2022 brought to you by CIPFA and Public Finance. The winners, drawn from across the sector and representing all parts of the UK, demonstrate the remarkable dedication and inventiveness of those working to deliver excellence in governance and financial management throughout the public sector.
Congratulations to all 2022 winners.
To view the pictures taken from the 2022 Public Finance Awards please click here
Recruiting and retaining team members is vital for morale and critical for service delivery. Diversity is critical if the organisation is to reflect the community it serves.
Manchester City Council’s financial management set up a collaborative cross team and cross grade working group within Financial Management.
The aim was to understand the challenges and barriers to inclusion in the service. The team have actively sought to ensure they take ownership to provide a safe environment and culture where people can raise and discuss any issues relating to workforce equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
The task has included developing staff surveys, a mentoring scheme and an open conversation about recruitment and training needs.
The initiative has also led to enhanced working relationships amongst teams whom all have a joint stake in guaranteeing success of EDI across the service.
Problem solving has also improved, and the work has strengthened resilience.
It has given staff a wider opportunity to develop their profile organisationally and give them a wider operational sense.
The team has also ensured EDI involves people across the service, at different levels and from different backgrounds.
During lockdown, the new group also provided employee outreach and engagement providing contributions to bulletins, newsletters, surveys and regular meetings.
There have been plenty of successes. The staff surveys helped to raise the profile of EDI and the issues associated with it. The organisation has a better understanding of the fact that a diverse workforce has more perspectives, better decision making and more cultural awareness, and will deliver better outcomes for our residents
Senior finance leaders have now been set meaningful equality objectives. It is now the norm that EDI questions are asked at all levels of recruitment.
Managers and leaders understand and continually demonstrate their commitment to EDI.
This work has also led to enhanced working relationships among teams who all have a joint stake in guaranteeing success of EDI across the service. Problem solving has also improved and the work has strengthened resilience.
It has given staff a wider opportunity to develop their profile organisationally and allow them a wider operational sense.
The judges said: “We felt this was a strong category and were particularly interested in how organisations evidenced ‘maintaining success’. The range of initiatives and the nuanced way in which EDI objectives were being delivered should be highly commended – a great example of how others can learn from the success of the entrants.”
Shortlist
• Diversity, Inclusion and Recruitment Teams, National Audit Office
• Finance and Procurement Team, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) is the oversight body that scrutinises Police Scotland (similar to a Police and Crime Commissioner) and its audit, risk and assurance committee (ARAC) has responsibility for oversight and scrutiny of significant audit and risk matters.
In previous years, the SPA has been publicly criticised for its failures in financial management, and its ability to act in the public interest in relation to risk management and oversight. Long and detailed committee papers were being presented, committee meetings would become absorbed in operational or management matters, and there was a lack of clear assurance on governance, risks and controls.
So, in late 2020, an organisational restructure created a new audit and risk team. They were set a key objective by the chief executive of improving the effectiveness of the ARAC to become ‘best in class’.
The team supports ARAC board members in fulfilling their public role and provides ARAC and the accountable officer with assurances on the effectiveness of internal controls including risk management and internal audit.
They reset the relationship with assurance providers, focusing on joint working and avoiding duplication of work. The authority’s first strategic assurance map brought together planned assurance activities across the four lines of defence, highlighting assurance and gaps.
Improved coordination of assurance activities avoided duplication of assurance work during planning and throughout the year and allowed for better alignment of assurance, business plan priorities and risk – as well as better targeted audits.
There is now a recognised ‘culture of improvement’. The team are challenged to not simply replicate prior work and ensure they are continuing to meet the needs of the board and accountable officer.
Their achievements have been acknowledged by the right people. The team has “delivered exceptional improvement” (ARAC chair) to the Scottish policing service and ARAC, realising improvement in governance, risk management and reporting. This includes innovative approaches to demonstrating best value, assurance mapping and integrated assurance. These have been widely recognised and praised, including Audit Scotland which said the work was an “example of best practice”.
Attention is also progressing to sharing learning from the improvements made. Police Scotland, having seen the team’s success, is actively seeking help.
Judges said: “This entry displayed a real success story. Excellent achievement and well evidenced, driving forward a failing area and successfully turning this around.”
Shortlist
• Commercial Governance Team, Manchester City Council
• Finance and Procurement Team, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Internal Audit Team, Annual Governance Statement, London North Eastern Railway
• Internal Audit Team, London North Eastern Railway and Network Rail
• Livv Housing Group
• Mfon Akpan, Chris Coyne and Courtnay Ip Tat Kuen, National Audit Office
• Neil Helliwell, Rochdale Council
Getting staff to adopt new ways of working is a big issue for every organisation.
The decision was taken to champion digital technology as a way to deliver services – and the result was the creation of the world’s first year-end interactive simulation game.
Radical changes to working practices had been made so the novel solution was created to engage finance and non-finance colleagues, making finance fun, and ensuring it can be wide-reaching in a mobile environment. The second objective was to use the simulator to encourage increased staff interaction.
The nature and design of the game allowed managers to measure the successful outcomes by the scope of reach and accessibility to staff and reduced risk of errors in preparing the accounts.
To date there have been around 3,500 gameplays from 259 people, of whom 150 were non-finance staff, all playing a final accounts game.
The gaming technology and delivery platforms were tried and tested, and the competition elements created a series of conversations that demonstrated where knowledge gains and gaps existed.
It has raised wider knowledge of financial terminology and reporting considerations through the wider trust and finance department. The product has proven successful in engaging with people who would probably have never engaged in this way before.
The first audit of the merged trust, which occurred in the first wave of the pandemic, was a technical challenge. The training programme ultimately led to a successful, clean and high-quality audit process during the 2020/21 cycle, with a much higher quality narrative flow to the working papers and a simplified and more easily accessible process with external audit.
There are now plans to explore the commercial potential that could also spin off from the maturing technology. The first module had 12 levels, and now the aim is to develop further modules, as well as creating generic modules for academic establishments and other organisations outside of the NHS. They are looking to fund future expansion by commercialising the product and using the revenue stream.
The judges said: “Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust presented a solution to a common problem, demonstrating how innovative ideas can make a really dry finance subject fun. Really relatable to issues faced in finance teams across the country. Truly modernising the finance geek.”
Shortlist
• Invoice Monitoring System, NHS Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group
• Pension Credit Take-Up Campaign, Islington Council
• Programme Cost Review Dashboard, Defence Equipment and Support
• Single Lead Employer Payment of Locum Shifts to Junior Doctor and Dentist Trainees, NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership
• Using RPA and BI to Provide Improved Information to Managers, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust
The National Audit Office (NAO) is critical to ensuring that public finances are scrutinised and that the government is held to account.
The best annual reports tell the story of the organisation, effectively communicating to stakeholders on areas such as the organisational strategy and key risks.
The NAO’s 2020-21 annual report and accounts was the first to report against the new five-year strategy, showing substantial progress, despite the impact of Covid-19 on its people and work. The report transparently set out strategic priorities, progress and areas of further focus. It made clear connections between the role the NAO played in supporting Parliament to hold government to account, its achievements and the people that made them happen.
The NAO also uses its report as an opportunity to demonstrate good practice in reporting, following the principles of transparency, accessibility and ensuring that the report is understandable.
So it used internal expertise to ensure the NAO delivered a report of high-quality. This included expert review of adherence to financial reporting requirements; use of good practice principles from the onset, in turn helping to shape the report’s theme and design; and collaboration across the organisation to ensure maximised internal knowledge.
The report used an organisational style guide and proofreaders to ensure the narrative was clear, consistent and easy to read for a broad audience. The delivery team worked to ensure the annual report had a ‘golden thread’ throughout the narrative, making clear links between strategy and progress, and how colleagues were managing the risks of this.
The report used statistics throughout the report to quantitatively highlight progress and removed overly technical language. It used case studies written by colleagues to help bring the NAO’s work to life and to illustrate how different teams contribute to shared success and strategic priorities. On the NAO website, the report can be found, together with transparency and diversity and inclusion reports, enabling readers to understand the full story of performance and ambitions.
The judges said: “Innovative in promoting awareness using different types of media, extending their reach to a wider audience. They are sharing their journey with stakeholders and celebrating success with staff – realising difference and contribution with staff.”
Highly Commended
• Finance, Marketing and Communications and Design Teams, NHS Property Services
Shortlist
• Finance and Procurement Team, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Manchester City Council is on a mission to create a healthy, green, socially just place where everyone can thrive.
And its target is to become a zero-carbon city by 2038 at the latest, 12 years ahead of the government’s target for the UK of 2050.
Those are big ambitions, given the city is home to an estimated 580,000 residents and 23.8% of employees are paid less than the living wage.
The work to get there is set out in a Climate Change Action Plan with specific goals of delivering at least a 50% reduction in carbon emissions from council buildings, energy and transport by 2025. That’s a 13% year-on-year reduction. Reporting quarterly will check progress and provide quantitative reports on data in tonnes of CO2.
Of course, there are big challenges too. Extremely short timeframes are required under the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), including in the supply chain. Work on the Green Homes Grant Local Authority Delivery scheme faced pressures including securing contractors, engaging owner-occupiers willing to consider new technologies and gaining access to homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The plan was developed to ensure that all aspects of the council’s Climate Emergency Declaration were converted into clear actions with CO2 savings targets for the council.
The project, which has five workstreams, is also science-based: the 2038 target was adopted following analysis by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. A carbon budget of 15.2 million tonnes of CO2 has been set for Manchester between 2018 and 2100. The Council’s own portion of this is 316,000 tonnes.
It is underpinned by a capital and revenue investment plan; to date, there has been an investment of around £19m.
Quarterly workstream meetings are led by senior officers reporting to the Zero Carbon Coordination Group chaired by the deputy chief executive and attended by an Executive member.
The results so far include a Civic Quarter Heat Network going live in 2021. This is a combined heat and power system that distributes electricity and heat between connected buildings, offering economies of scale and carbon savings.
Interventions include heat pumps, solar PV on buildings and car ports and battery storage. The refuse vehicle fleet is replaced as part of a £9.8m investment.
The initiative is now embedded as a core business and the council is now exploring hydrogen power, learning from others such as Aberdeen and working with Transport for Greater Manchester and Manchester Airport Group.
Barts Assurance is the specialist internal audit and counter fraud team within Barts Health NHS Trust. It is one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, with an income of more than £2bn.
The team delivers assurance services to Barts and external contracted clients including Croydon Health NHS Trust, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and the British Museum. The team is a member of the TIAN network of NHS-based audit groups.
Despite the pandemic, which resulted in staff redeployment and a move to remote working, the last internal audit service has been transformed, with major improvement to the quality of assurance received by its audit and risk committee.
But change was needed.
The team had never had any external quality assurance (EQA). As a result of this, the team’s methodology, procedures and reporting were outdated, and did not reflect a modern risk-based approach. Over the previous 10 years, London Audit Consortium had steadily lost clients, with the last external member leaving at the end of March 2020. Internal Audit’s perception and standing with senior management and the trust’s audit and risk committee was not high – and neither was staff morale.
So a new operating mandate was agreed, with new objectives and future governance measures. A staff restructure followed and new IT equipment including smart phones and laptops were sourced.
A new audit management system was procured during 2021 and implemented in March 2022.
Major initiatives have included commissioning the team’s first EQA, developing and delivering the resulting improvement plan, introducing modern data analytics and audit automation software, making use of specialists to address clinical and cyber risks, and personally auditing the London Nightingale’s financial governance.
With no specific funding made available to make changes, the modernisation has been largely cost-neutral overall – with no redundancy costs incurred.
Change has been noticed: senior management have acknowledged improved engagement, and the group chief medical officer has complimented the positive changes that have resulted.
The changes aren’t stopping here. Future development plans include developing staff skills and partner working as well as furthering the use of data analytics. New work will focus on new and emerging risk areas such as inclusion, sustainability and cyber security.
The judges said: “Clear evidence of a declining service that was transformed, overcoming low morale and bringing the team back together. They transformed the audit function during a particularly challenging time for the NHS due to the pandemic.”
Shortlist
• Audit Quality and Appointments Team, Audit Scotland
• Ceri Pilawski, Head of Audit, Shropshire Council
• Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Financial Audit Team, National Audit Office
• Internal Audit Team, SWAP Internal Audit Services
• Professional Practice Team, Government Internal Audit Agency
Responsibility for safeguarding vulnerable people is a critical priority for councils and a range of safeguarding partners.
Too often, vulnerability is identified too late. Limited data sharing between organisations makes it hard to identify people who need support before they hit a crisis.
One solution is the new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Tracker (MAST) platform, and Walsall Council has played a leading role in its creation. MAST combines datasets from Walsall Council – Adult Social Care, Children’s Social Care and Public Health; Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust; West Midlands Police; and West Midlands Fire and Rescue. This allows social workers to see if other safeguarding agencies are actively involved with a person or address too. The information will then support their professional judgement and make it easier to have conversations with practitioners from other services.
The project is one of three Social Care Digital Innovation Accelerator (SCDIA) 2020/21 projects and is run by Policy in Practice and CC2i for LGA, with match funding from NHS Digital.
It creates a data-driven digital approach enabling information from multiple safeguarding bodies to be easily and securely shared, matched and anonymised.
By limiting access to the necessary information to authorised parties, this approach sits squarely within the GDPR regulations and wider requirements as demanded by the Data Protection Act 2018. This project involving multiple partner organisations used a collaborative approach. The principles of co-design were applied to identify the data common to all parties that could be shared.
To date, more than 100,000 records have been successfully brought into the system with significant results. Half of Walsall Council’s Children’s Social Care records and two-thirds of adult records match a record from at least one of the other partners.
Multiple cases previously unknown between the services and where there have been multiple incidents have had data-matching results. At least two of these matches, one with multiple incidents at the same address, were not known to Children’s Services, justifying the project alone.
All MAST project partners are committed for another year and, so far, MAST has received attention from over 50 other councils, health and police organisations who are interested in its potential.
The judges said their entry was “an impressive story about the real-world benefits of sharing data to improve public service delivery”.
Shortlist
• Tandridge Finance Transformation Programme, Anna D’Alessandro and the Tandridge Finance Transformation Programme Team
• The Medway Safer Streets Project, Commissioning Team, Kent Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, Environmental Team, Medway Council, Kent Police and Kent Fire and Rescue Service
• SWAP Team, SWAP Internal Audit Services
The counter fraud shared service partnership arrangement between the London Borough of Enfield (LBE) and of Waltham Forest (LBWF) is responsible for undertaking proactive anti-fraud work and investigating reactive referrals of alleged fraud committed against both councils.
The arrangement has enabled the sharing of best practice across the two authorities, both of whom have a zero-tolerance approach to fraud and a shared ambition to safeguard public money and assets.
The aim is to prevent fraud from the outset, but where fraud does occur, to prosecute offenders and take action to recover any proceeds of crime. This zero-tolerance stance is from the top down; the leader and chief executive sign an annual commitment statement underpinning this strategy.
The key fraud risks are corporate internal fraud by council staff, temporary staff or contractors; subletting council housing property; benefit fraud; and money laundering.
Activities undertaken during 2021/22 included corporate internal fraud, leading to successful prosecutions. The team promote fraud awareness and the whistleblower policy to staff via newsletters, e-learning and staff communication channels.
Cyber security fraud investigations were conducted in partnership with ICT officers into phishing email scams and mandate fraud scams which have resulted in large sums being returned.
Another area of work was post-contract award where contractors exploit a lack of contract management by overcharging for completed works and issuing duplicate invoices.
The 2021/22 successes included 53 council properties recovered, with an estimated new build value of £7.95m and a notional value of at least £756k. Legal action is pending in another 50 cases. Nineteen right-to-buy applications were prevented, representing a total discount value of £2.1m. Work on the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) output has led to estimated savings in excess of £2m, mainly from housing, single person discount, and blue badge fraud. Covid-19 business grant investigations have led to recovery action of grants valued at £539k.
Future work will be to embed control improvements identified by investigations; during 2021/22, security arrangements at council buildings have been improved following a vehicle theft, and control changes have blocked fraudulent attempts to change vendor bank accounts.
Officers will keep up to date with latest developments and utilise anti-fraud services provided by the NFI Fraud Hub and Cifas, share innovation and best practice and use data analytics to identify potential fraud.
The judges felt this collaboration between two councils “provided an outstanding example of proactive fraud detection and recovery. There is clear commitment from the top to fraud prevention.”
Shortlist
• Cyber Resilience Centre, Department for Work and Pensions
• Loss and Fraud Prevention Team, NHS Business Services Authority
• Shared Anti-Fraud Service, Hertfordshire County Council
• The Counter Fraud Team, Rochdale Borough Council
Navigating the benefits system is complex and stressful for most people.
In 2008, Deven was unemployed and saw for himself how confusing the benefit system was. So he founded Policy in Practice, a social policy software and analytics company that strives to make the welfare system work for everyone.
He combined smart technology with data and expert policy analysis to help understand how lives are changing. The tools were designed to prevent hardship before it happens or help people to access support quickly and easily if it already has.
Policy in Practice had identified that delivering Covid-19 support funds was a particular challenge for local authorities. The Household Support Fund, worth £500m, was announced on 6 October 2021 and had to be spent by 31 March 2022.
The partnership helped clients at nearly 50 local authorities target £19m in Household Support Funds, and get it out to people quickly, through the analysis of administrative data to allow councils to accurately target their funds The Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) platform has been instrumental in helping many local authorities accurately target their Household Support Funds using their administrative data.
They helped nine councils, which were given £18,590,294 of discretionary Housing Support Fund money to allocate to their most vulnerable residents. Around 80% of this money was set aside to proactively help households most at risk. On average, households received between £100 to £200 each, equating to 149,000 households that have been supported using this data-driven preventative approach. Households have been given either cash or vouchers to use on vital supplies of food or to meet energy costs.
Policy in Practice is now scaling up its solutions and services to reach more people, including free webinars that are hosted every month where a social policy challenge, such as the cost-of-living crisis, is explored. These feature a client as a guest speaker to talk about how they are addressing the challenge using our tools, and the impact that they are achieving. The partnership continues to develop the LIFT platform.
The latest initiative, which maps and links administrative datasets from different organisations that support the same household for safeguarding purposes, has not been done in the UK before.
The judges said: “This was an impressive submission from a relatively new organisation with a cutting-edge approach. Policy in Practice was adding considerable value to authorities’ efforts, helping them to turn their ambitions into practical deliverables that make tangible improvements to people’s lives.”
Highly Commended
• KMCR Team, Cantium Business Solutions
Shortlist
• Camdor Global Advisors with Warrington Borough Council and Wirral Council
• Digital Inclusion Team, Cantium Business Solutions
• KPMG IGH Consulting with Birmingham City Council
• Mastek with Suffolk County Council
• Shared Services Connected with CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) – O2C (Order to Cash) Contract
In 2014, Alex started as an ATT modern apprentice at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) straight from school.
He has steadily risen through the organisation to become a divisional finance manager, winning the ELHT Finance Rising Star and Role Model Award on the way.
His main role and objective is to provide senior financial leadership and governance across the Community and Intermediate Care Division, while supporting the wider finance strategy across the organisation.
He is a key figure in the annual budget setting and business planning rounds, ensuring that he is in the best place to allow his division to achieve its financial objectives over the forthcoming period, while also being heavily involved in new developments, and ensuring that the financial impact is correctly realised, feeding back into the wider senior finance team.
Another key part of his role is to be the figurehead for the training and development for his immediate team, the wider department and clinical colleagues.
Among his achievements is the creation of several training groups for the team to share tips, and he is a point of contact for any struggling student.
Alex is a value maker and finance and clinical educator (FACE) in the One Finance network and has presented at many regional and national events. He has also encouraged other members of the team to present at events like these to continue their own professional development.
He is in the process of cascading the improvements derived from automating the divisional monthly finance reports throughout the other divisions to ensure a more efficient and consistent output, saving approximately 50 hours per month.
He was nominated because he has led many improvement processes that have increased efficiency and delivered greater value for money. Alex has pioneered many developments within the team, improving the accuracy and useability of the output and saving hours of time in the process.
Alex’s ultimate objective is to become the director of finance for an acute NHS trust.
A colleague said: “Alex is dynamic and innovative and always asks searching and pertinent questions to guide the team in our financial management. He is a fantastic addition to our team.”
The judges felt that Alex was clearly destined to be an outstanding future senior leader.
Judge’s comments: “His application was supported by some excellent testimonials from senior managers praising his many achievements. They describe him as being innovative and creative.”
Paul McKevitt has been part of the top team at Wigan Council as deputy chief executive and the Section 151 officer since 2008. He is also the director of finance at the Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), and has held the joint posts since June 2018.
It’s a huge responsibility as the organisations have a combined annual spend of £1.2bn.
The Wigan Borough CCG is responsible for choosing and buying local health services to support the needs of more than 320,000 patients.
But his outstanding work is not just about numbers: there is an organisational focus on prevention and early intervention.
And that’s not the only big agenda: the council is moving ahead with an affordable housing development and a major town centre redevelopment that is backed by £16m from the Future High Streets Fund.
Both are being delivered despite the hugely challenging pressures facing retail and housing development.
These achievements are based on many years of achievements. The council was praised in an official report in 2016 for having created the financial resilience needed to survive economic downturns.
The council has retained its own housing stock and has successfully managed the costs despite a national policy direction which favours other options.
Paul’s joint role is helping to modernise children’s services with the aim of strengthening families and protecting children. His role on the leadership team working with police and other agencies has been integral to achieving this.
Working across health and local authority delivery has proved crucial in supporting the large population of older people – many of whom have complex health needs.
Using his skills over many years to successfully enable the council to deliver in a challenging financial climate has prepared his colleagues for the tough times ahead.
In February this year, the council revealed it was confident there would be no cuts to services or job losses in the next financial year – despite the huge budget pressures.
It’s not just the day-to-day management where Paul is influencing outcomes.
Wigan must compete with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority for funding and investment. The answer has been to create ‘growth locations’ as part of a masterplan called the Wigan and Bolton Growth Corridor.
It’s ensuring the area will not be left behind. Today, the road to Wigan Pier is an optimistic one – and that’s in no small part due to Paul’s dedication.
Highly Commended
• Jo Bentley, Executive Director of Finance, Estates and Risk Management, Hopwood Hall College and University Centre
Delivering security for a global summit is no easy task. COP26 was one of the largest events ever staged in the UK, attended by 128 world leaders and 40,000 delegates.
The COP26 finance and procurement team were instrumental in ensuring that the policing operation was a success. They delivered the policing operation under the £180m estimated cost and were responsible for the delivery of 150 contracts over the 25 days of the operation.
Embedding a dedicated finance and procurement team meant they were able to have visibility of operational planning assumptions, manage a complex and diverse set of stakeholders, revise cost estimates and deal with urgent unplanned expenditure/challenges.
The team consisted of Lynn Brown, financial planning and analysis lead; Amber Dust, senior finance business partner; Nicola Challis, senior finance business partner; and Pamela Marshall, senior business intelligence analyst finance activities.
Key to success was the negotiation of a set of finance business principles with stakeholders from the outset that were adhered to throughout.
The team worked closely with the Cabinet Office COP26 team to build trusted relationships and agree funding requirements. They were a business partner to the gold/silver commander and operational planning team.
A range of activities were delivered from the costing of workstreams and timing of requirements, developing business cases to secure funding from the Cabinet Office or Home Office, through to managing credit cards, cash distribution and overtime payments.
As the event was bespoke, there was little information at the outset on which to base a robust finance or procurement plan. Planning was also carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic, which created its own unique set of challenges, particularly as some of the planning assumptions could only be confirmed immediately prior to the conference.
Despite these challenges, the team underpinned the successful delivery of over 150 contracts and secured £145m from the COP26 Unit in the Cabinet Office.
Police Scotland’s business cases were considered best practice by the Cabinet Office and were shared among other delivery partners. The team liaised with the UK government to confirm the significant logistical requirements for officer accommodation (10,000 rooms) and supported the Home Office with the finalisation of significant mutual aid costs of police forces from across the UK.
The judges said: “A strong submission demonstrating the contribution of public finance to delivering the COP 26 event, delivered at pace while producing wider benefits in terms of best practice that can be used by others.”
Shortlist
• Strategic Finance Team, Department for International Trade
Birmingham City Council’s finance team consists of over 250 staff across a number of disciplines. They have been on a transformation journey to become a first-class finance team – from a one-star CIPFA financial management council in 2019 to a three-star in May 2021 – making them the only team in the country to have achieved this success.
Birmingham has delivered a fundamental financial management shift across the organisation, improving and enhancing the finance team and the council’s approach to financial management. This has been achieved through a unified, ambitious and dynamic financial leadership team, a clear financial strategy, prudent spending and a whole-council approach to change in culture and operation.
The top objective was to deliver a best-in-class finance service through excellent financial leadership by being open and transparent and building organisational trust to strengthen decision-making. Finance and the team are enablers. The role of the finance business partner has been strengthened to provide professional financial insight and challenge in an open and collaborative manner with both officers and elected members.
The results are significant: the financial plan has been overhauled and strengthened and, in 2021/22, Birmingham delivered over 90% of planned savings (£33.6m), a significant improvement on previous performance, especially as officers were still operating during a pandemic.
In 2021, CIPFA noted that the financial plan was exemplary, with a straightforward and honest appraisal of the financial position.
Financial accountability, previously a weakness identified in 2019, is now the cornerstone of budget management in Birmingham, with budget managers actively owning their budgets and spend.
The team has also delivered cultural change to achieve a shared understanding and ownership of financial management across the whole council.
This has been achieved by creating organisational confidence, rebuilding relationships and strengthening stakeholder engagement and collaboration.
The S151 Officer was able to write a very strong S25 statement in the February 2022 budget report to Full Council confirming that the budget and medium-term financial strategy is robust, achievable and sustainable.
The 2021/22 budget has been delivered within available resources demonstrating that the City Council is able to deliver in times of continued uncertainty and rising demand.
They say: “We will not be stopping here and are already striving to become a 4-star authority by spring 2023.”
The judges said: “There has clearly been development of the team, with a strong sense of team pride emerging. Strong leadership was shown; we particularly liked the mentoring within the team and thought that there was excellent engagement across the council.”
Shortlist
• Finance and Commercial Leadership Team, Dorset Council
• Finance Department, Hopwood Hall College and University Centre
• Finance Team, Warwickshire County Council
Greater Manchester Mental Health (GMMH) NHS Foundation Trust’s 60-strong team has faced some big challenges over the past year.
Covid-19 brought its own set of challenges, but in addition to this the team has overseen some significant transactions, including the transfer of Wigan Mental Health Services (£40m), the launch of a lead provider collaborative for secure services (£60m), gaining Level 3 Finance Accreditation and the development of a comprehensive training, development and health and wellbeing package.
Ensuring a strong organisational culture is a crucial objective. This is being achieved through having a mix of qualified staff, including those training for professional qualifications, alongside people who have worked with the organisation for many years.
Key objectives are a golden thread that runs throughout all personal development plans and they all have three categories: new developments linked to delivery of the trust strategy, core business and the extra mile – those priorities that are true to values as an individual and a team.
The culture is one of growth, learning, support and wellbeing. Despite Covid-19, staff were encourage to take on development opportunities where and whenever possible. The finance priorities have created a mechanism to do this, and a number of task and finish groups have emerged.
A sponsorship model operates where there is always someone to provide guidance and ensure things are on track – but for these priorities all are equally involved and responsible.
A GMMH finance training package is offered around themes – health and wellbeing, skills for life, and knowing the business – so there is something for everyone. A lunchtime learning programme has ensured that the team remained connected during Covid-19, based on the feedback and suggestions made by staff. Support to the local communities and contributing to social value is being achieved by working with local colleges and schools to develop a bespoke finance apprenticeship/work experience scheme.
The finance team have also worked closely with the rest of the trust on areas that make finance easier to understand. They presented the annual accounts via an animation, have held jargon-busting quizzes for governors and masterclasses for non-finance staff.
Their leaders said: “This team is special. The last 12 to 18 months have been hard for us all, but the positive attitude, team spirit and desire to support the wider organisation sets them apart.”
The judges said: “A very strong submission that had patients at the centre of it and a firm emphasis on culture and social value.”
Highly Commended
• Finance Team, Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust
Shortlist
• Finance and Accounting Team, NHS Shared Business Services
• Finance and Procurement Team, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Finance Team, NHS Property Services
