Roles and responsibilities of budget holders and budget managers

Budget holder roles and responsibilities 

A budget holder is accountable for the effective management of the budgets allocated to them to either oversee or manage.

This includes where delegations are in place that enable officers to commit expenditure on their behalf.

A budget holder needs to make sure resources are:

• accounted for
• used for their intended purposes

​Within the Council, budget holders generally sit at Director or Head of Service level.

​A budget holder can delegate full budget holder accountabilities to a lower level in their management structure where the value of the budget delegated is more than £1m (one million).

As a budget holder, you are expected to:​

• maintain effective budgetary control within your service to make sure that spending stays within the annual cash limit and to secure value for money
• understand how your budget is made up, what you spend money on such as staffing and suppliers, what income you might receive and how you maximise collection
• understand the expenditure and income trends for your service and take action if these are not going as planned
• make sure there are no commitments that would result in exceeding an approved budget. You must get prior approval to increase the budget either by virement or by a supplementary estimate before making additional commitments​
• make sure that orders are receipted​
• make sure income is collected in advance of service provision where possible, and if not, invoices are raised as soon as a service is booked​
• make sure that your staffing establishment is up to date on My Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) system​
• update the My Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) system for changes to the pay forecasting​
• update the My Oracle PBCS system for changes to the revenue budget forecasting​ (for Corporate Services only)
• track and report your forecast position regularly, and understand whether you expect to under or over spend​
• prepare a recovery plan if you are over spending and how you intend to recover your position

A  budget holder can nominate officers to have some delegated authority for their areas, but they cannot delegate full budget holder accountability.  We call these Budget Managers.

A budget holder can set delegations to approve orders on their behalf, within their management structure.

Budget manager roles and responsibilities

A budget manager is responsible for operating within the delegations set out by the budget holder.  A budget manager will need to make sure that the resources are used for their intended purposes and are accounted for.​

As a budget manager, you are expected to:​

• understand how your budget is made up, what you spend money on such as staffing and suppliers, what income you might receive and how you maximise collection
• make sure there are no commitments that would result in exceeding an approved budget. You must get prior approval to increase the budget either by virement or by a supplementary estimate before making additional commitments​
• make sure that orders are receipted​
• make sure income is collected in advance of service provision where possible, and if not, invoices are raised as soon as a service is booked​
• make sure that your staffing establishment is up to date on My Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) system​
• update the My Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) system for changes to the pay forecasting​
• update the My Oracle (PBCS) system for changes to the revenue budget forecasting​ (for Corporate Services only)
• track and report your forecast position regularly, and understand whether you expect to under or over spend​