| AdminHistory | The Finance Committee and Department is an administrative section for advising the Council on financial decision making, the payment of accounts, bookkeeping (assets and liabilities), raising capital (rates), loans and debt management, budgeting and estimates and the co-ordination of the financial records of the departments of the Corporation. The first Borough Treasurer was Mr Henry Knight, who was elected in June 1839. The first Finance Committee minutes seem to date from 26 June 1839, though a committee had been appointed as early as April 1839 to investigate the rating power of the Corporation, and it was this their report that was to be the start of the challenge to incorporation. Failure to levy the rate resulted in the Finance Committee advising the Borough Council to seek advice from the Home Secretary, which resulted in several loans and the eventual suspension of the charter.
By 1852 basic departmental reports and accounts are written into the committee minutes, along with general balance sheets, loan schedules and statements of liabilities and assets. The committee appears to interchange its name between the Finance Committee and its formal name, the Finance, Rate and Appeal Committee, even in its own reports. However, by July 1875, it appears to have become simply the Finance Committee. This was due to the fact that the Assessment, Rate and Appeals Committee was merged with the Finance Committee in November 1858 (see BCC/1/AK).
The scope of the committee also increased, as from 1897, it took on the running of the Corporation Superannuation Scheme and, in 1908, under the Finance Act, the Corporation became responsible for the issuing of local licences, such as for dogs, vehicle and servants, and the prosecution of cases involving failure to get them. Further, in 1911, the city boundaries were extended and it became a function of the Finance Committee to devise a uniform system of rating to accommodate all the parishes. Until 1934, the borough auditors undertook the auditing of all the Corporation accounts. In response to the Local Government Act of 1933 this function was removed and the Finance Committee recommended a series of professional auditors to examine the accounts of the Corporation and its trading undertakings (gas, water and electricity). |