Budgeting in Local Councils

Abstract

Constrained by limited sources of funding, Local Councils depend mainly on the annual funding by the Central Government and any additional income raised from activities organized by themselves. This results to a limitation on the activities of Local Councils to their legal obligations without giving space for other initiatives. Thus budgeting is of extreme importance in order to allocate the funds received in the most efficient way possible. The objective of such dissertation is to analyse the present budgeting system of Local Councils, and suggest improvements that need to take place due to the increase in transfer of powers from the Central Government to the Local Councils. This dissertation studies the present budgeting system in Maltese Local Councils with reference to the budgeting system used by British Local Councils. Information on these budgeting systems was obtained by means of 93 questionnaires and an interview. The results of this study showed that Local Councils and their related authorities give budgeting a lot of importance, on average, but there are councils that prepare the budget just to satisfy the requirements imposed on them by the law.