Adele Taylor offers the inside track on the fluid response that has made great strides in stabilising Slough Council’s finances following a section 114 notice

A lot is written about the causes of s114 notices, but in reality for any council close to or in intervention there are lessons all councils could learn from. We cannot lose sight of our main purpose of financial management, stewardship and ultimately our responsibility to our residents.

In our newly agreed financial vision at Slough as part of our improvement action plan I wrote, I noted: ‘We are custodians of taxpayer money that needs to be spent wisely and well. For every £1 we spend and every £1 we collect, we treat it like our own’.