Fingal County Council – A Changing Local Authority


A message from County Manager, David O’Connor


As an organisation, Fingal County Council has undergone radical change and delivered important savings in response to the financial and staffing challenges it has faced in recent years. Careful and prudent financial management and restructuring of Council services and departments since 2009 has meant that the Council has continued to deliver frontline services and to deal with the effects of staff losses while minimising the impact on service delivery at local level.


How have we done this? Firstly, important cost savings have been made on things like energy, procurement and staff overtime by us thinking differently about how we do things on a day to day basis. At a wider level however, a potentially greater challenge faced us when we began to lose staff through retirements or non-renewal of contracts. We had to come up with new ways of doing things and so between 2009 and 2010, we looked at everything we did and broke it down into tasks, operations and functions before reorganising it into three streams focusing on Corporate,


Strategic and Operational responsibilities. Our Operations teams who do the work on the ground that you see everyday are now working together on an area basis. We no longer have Environment or Roads Departments for example but instead have an Operations Department with teams for Castleknock/Mulhuddart, Balbriggan/Swords and Howth/Malahide.


This change is part of a process that is ongoing and one which must continue if we are to find further savings and efficiencies without impacting the services your community needs. Sustainable local government funding is also vital to guaranteeing services into the future and local taxes are an unavoidable and necessary part of that funding model. We have achieved a lot in recent years but the task is far from complete. Local government must keep working to be more flexible, more efficient and more sustainable so that your communities can benefit from the services you need in future.


Where Does Fingal County Council Get its Funding?


At the beginning of 2012 Fingal County Council set a budget for day to day spending on local services of ¤222m. Our full budget, approved by your Councillors in December 2011, is available on www.fingalcoco.ie and this year we expect to spend nearly:


• ¤40m on Housing services, • ¤24m on Roads and Transport, • ¤45m on Water services, • ¤44m on Environmental Services, • ¤33mon Parks, Libraries, Sport and Community facilities.


These are the essential services we provide in Fingal every day. So where does the funding come from to provide these services? 78% or just over ¤173m of Fingal County Council’s annual income comes from non-government sources with ratepayers making the greatest contribution of ¤120m. Added to income from housing loans and rents (¤18.7m) commercial water charges (¤6.6m), staff pension contributions (¤6.2m), Non-Principal-Private-Residence Charge (¤3.3m) and a variety of income from fines, fees, sale of property, and services provided to other bodies totalling ¤18.6m,


ELEMENTS OF INCOME


COMMERCIAL RATES 54%


LOCAL


GOVERNMENT FUND 9%


ROADS


OTHER 24%


GRANTS 3% OTHER


GRANTS 10%


RENTS &


REPAYMENTS 8%


NPPR 1% PENSION DEDUCTIONS 3%


WATER/ WASTE-WATER CHARGES 3%


AGENCY SERVICES 3% INCOME


FROM OTHER SERVICES 6%


Fingal has a strong income base. Government funding is essential however and the remaining 22% or just over ¤48m of our budget comes from government. The Local Government Fund (which now includes the Household Charge) accounts for close to ¤20mwith the remaining ¤28m coming from roads and other grants for specific services.


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