BOURNEMOUTH Charter Trustees have followed the example of their counterparts in Poole – under-spending on their annual budget.

While Poole’s under-spend works out at around £1,000 a month, Bournemouth’s stands at £2,000 a month.

Both groups are also tucking away more money into reserves than they are recommended to – Bournemouth’s reserves going up from £67,000 to just under £91,000 this year.

At Poole the figure is now even higher, at £134,000.

In both cases the under-spends are partly caused by budgeting for events and activities which, for a variety of reasons, including Covid, did not happen.

Bournemouth Mayor, Anne Filer, made an appeal at the meeting for more invitations to events and activities to her office after saying that they had fallen off in the past couple of years and she wanted to revive the profile of the role.

One of the solutions for both Charter Trustees may be to make an adjustment in the amount of money collected as a precept through the council tax next year, which will be subject to an investigation by civic working groups.

Bournemouth trustees were told at their meeting that not all of the budget lines were necessarily accurate because of the way its accounting system works.

Finance officer Matt Filmer said one budget line, of £188 for fuel, was likely to be an under-calculation – the amount being set against an allowance of £1,500 budgeted for.

“Hopefully that’s an anomaly and it will improve going forward,” he said, telling councillors than new accounting systems were being brought in to make the system more accurate.

Annual accounts show that the Charter Trustees for Bournemouth cost around £148,000 a year, the largest item of expenditure of more than 50per cent of the budget, going on staff costs. The situation is similar for Poole where annual costs are around £138,000 a year.