Weeks before David Ford started as chief executive of Tandridge DC in June 2021 he got a call from his soon-to-be employer with bad news. The council discovered that in February 2020, selected cost lines appeared to have been removed from Tandridge's pensions-related budgets to the value of £920,500.
Essentially, a huge black hole had been discovered in the council's accounts.
The error had been missed during the agreement of the 2021-22 budget and was therefore rolled forward as part of the baseline – worsening its impact.
‘It's fair to say we came close to issuing a section 114 – and then we found the pensions mistake,' says leader Catherine Sayer.
Mr Ford's description of there being ‘a few nasties in our budget' may sound low-key, but there was no escaping the verdict a few months later of a hard-hitting September 2021 report by Grant Thornton.
‘All 15 recommendations were accepted and implemented and we now have strict accounting and reporting rules in place which, together with a new chief finance officer, has helped us to substantially improve the financial position for the council going forward,' Cllr Sayer explains.
‘We managed to go from concerns about having to issue a s114 notice to a £458,000 surplus in the revenue budget. Unfortunately, since then, inflation has knocked us back so we can't ease off at all on the plan for savings. We've got to save £1.7m next year.'
Mr Ford adds: ‘There was a lack of grip. All that's been tightened up. We have far more robust financial management now.
‘I was staggered that a lot of that wasn't in place. It's just [now] getting to stability. Compared to last year, we're in a much better position.'
It has been a difficult few years for the district – a relatively affluent area that Mr Ford describes as ‘archetypal Surrey'. After a previous transformation programme led to redundancies, he wants to handle the remaining 220-strong workforce more carefully this time, including the better use of evidence in key decisions.
Speaking ahead of a looming staff briefing on the afternoon of our interview, he says: ‘It's still there now. You can see the blood draining from some of their faces. However, further staff reductions are inevitable.'
Cllr Sayer adds: ‘It's been quite a sleepy council for a long time. If we can just bring ourselves into the future that will help.' Or even just bring the council into the 20th century, Mr Ford adds.
However, independent Cllr Sayer – a published author and a former journalist – is also realistic about her ambitions for the council, which is currently in no overall control.
‘The most frustrating part is the slowness of local government. Getting anything done takes a while,' Cllr Sayer says. It has only been five years since frustrations with planning prompted her to stand for election.
That was only two years after the Oxted and Limpsfield Residents Group got its first councillor elected. Back then the Conservatives ran the council, holding 35 out of the 42 seats, but they have since shrunk to the third largest party, with just 10 councillors.
Cllr Sayer continues: ‘It [the Parliamentary constituency] is totally Conservative yet locally it's gone the other way. It was a feeling that the council was out of touch. It all happened very quickly. None of our group are political. I hate politics.
‘The residents' group now has 18 councillors. There's no whip so there's an element of herding cats, but in some ways it's quite healthy that we don't tell people what to do. At election time we all say the same thing.'
In this year's election, protecting the 94% of Tandridge that is in the Green Belt is expected to feature heavily. The proportion of Green Belt land is the highest of any council in England, and, with no big towns and no industrial estates, brownfield land is hard to find.
At least some of the fury generated by the Government's top-down housing targets may have been eased following recent ministerial commitments.
‘It's not like we haven't been building,' insists Cllr Sayer. ‘We've kept building council houses. We want to build. If the targets aren't there things would still get built.
‘I don't think it will alter very much. It's just that we wouldn't be penalised and we would have control.'
Cllr Sayer has so far gained greater control of the council's finances and is hoping Tandridge will soon also have more control over development in the district.
Next on the wish list will surely be winning full control of the council for her group of independents who have already given the local Conservatives a bit of a fright – very much on their own turf.
