Financial information

The council is financed mainly by a "precept" collected with the rates by the Chichester district council (CDC), although it sometimes also receives small grants and other income (eg a £274 grant for the King's coronation day in 2023). Towards the end of every year, the council draws up budgets and calculates how much money it needs for the next financial year (starting on 1st April). We then submit a request to Chichester in January and CDC works with the West Sussex county council, the police and its own departments and calculate the overall rate to be paid by each ratepayer. You can see our latest budgets on this site (See "budget / expenditure below) and you will see that the precept we collect is roughly £1 per month for each resident. Our aim is to provide the services for which we are responsible as efficiently as possible and we are always happy to hear suggestions from residents.

The council's "Responsible financial officer" (RFO) chairs the financial committee, which supervises all financial matters, according to a set of financial regulations which are reviewed each time a new RFO takes post and at least every 4 years, when a new parish council is elected in the local government elections. The latest financial regulations are available in our document store HERE.

Day-to-day payments and receipts are handled by the clerk, who reports to the council at its bi-monthly meetings on the latest expenditure and updates the budget. Any resident can attend these meetings and ask questions about finance - or anything else.

We also have to submit an annual return to the government, reporting our income & expenditure and reporting on our governance - see below.

You can see the budget for the current year, plus updates of expenditure for the year-to-date by looking at the papers for our latest council meeting (every other month from January) on the "What's on" page here, as we include a finance update, with bank statements at every meeting. You are also welcome to contact the clerk with any comments, questions or suggestions about the council's finances (or anything else).

Scans of our recent annual returns (including the annual governance statement and external audit certificate) are in the document store - you can see all of them HERE.

The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is a charge on development which was adopted by the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) on the 1st April 2017. The funds collected by the SDNPA are then spent on infrastructure needed to support the growth (of the new developments) planned in the National Park. Some of this money is also directly paid to parishes in which the development occurred in.

The SDNPA determines how best to spend the money collected by developers but some of it is paid out to parishes to support their own local infrastructure. Parish Councils with a "made Neighbourhood Plan" receive 25% of all the CIL funds collected from new development within their area. Other parishes (like ours) receive 15%.

Each year, we are required to produce a summary of the CIL money received and spent, which has to be submitted to the SDNPA and copied to our own website. You can find these HERE.

The council's only property is a small triangle of grass verge in Mill Lane (not valued) but we have also been investing in facilities to support community events, particularly in our local church and on our wildflower meadow at Dumpford (a piece of WSCC open space for which we have a licence. Our annual report of fixed assets is updated each year and you can see the latest version HERE.