MEMBERS of West Somerset District Council's cabinet welcomed the news they would have to do more work - in return for having greater control over the authority's budget.
At Monday night's cabinet meeting, councillors agreed with corporate and member services manager Rod Latham's idea to look at scrapping the annual budget and replacing it with a three year budget.
That budget would then be reviewed on a quarterly basis by officers and councillors, instead of the monthly review process which was currently used by the authority.
Mr Latham said such changes would bring the council in line with central Government policy, and ultimately make it easier for councillors to compare planned progress with actual performance.
In a report to the meeting he wrote: "It is necessary to move to a fundamentally different approach if the budget process is to have a genuinely positive impact on the achievement of the council's goals.
"Although more work needs to be done developing the concept in practical terms, it does seem to have at least the potential to complete the process of changing the role of the budget from being a negative constraint to a positive enabler."
Deputy leader of the council Cllr Colin Hill welcomed the idea and said the change would mean the authority would have to be even more disciplined in order to balance its books.
Mr Latham pointed out that while the council had underspent last year's budget by £195,000, it seemed likely that members could incur a £64,000 overspend in the first quarter of this year's budget.
He believed switching to a three year plan would stop such problems happening as there would be greater scope for long-term planning.
Cabinet members gave him the go-ahead to begin drawing up a new financial planning procedure for the council.
l The district council spent £2.048 million on capital projects during 1999-2000.
These included: £1,955 on office accommodation, £1,122 for the carousel toilets in Minehead; £7,800 on various village hall schemes; £2,000 on Wimbleball Sailing Club, £88,911 for Helwell Bay in Watchet; £13,000 towards the Williton Workhouse study, £2,873 on Watchet Youth Club; £264,820 for Watchet Marina; £248,634 on private sector renewal grants; £57,646 in disabled facilities grants; and £948,547 on the enhancement of Minehead seafront.
l There will be no change to the payment of members' allowances until a review of the democratic structure of the council is completed in October.
Cabinet members decided there was little point "fiddling about with allowances" until the outcome of the review was known.