On 21 October 2008 ministers unveiled a package of measures to help small and medium business owners deal with the impact of the current financial crisis.

Lord Mandelson announced that local councils should follow the lead of Government departments by paying suppliers within 10 days, in a bid to maintain cash flows on which businesses depend to survive.

The County Council is keen to meet this target and we have changed our procedures, so that, once invoices are on the Core Financial System, they can be released within the 10 day timescale to help support the local and wider economy.

For this to be of full benefit, we now need to make sure that invoices are put into the system as soon as possible after they are received.  We are therefore asking all employees to make invoice processing a priority, right from date stamping them on receipt, passing them on, checking, coding and approval through to the input and authorisation of documents in the Core Financial System.

For those services that deal with large volumes of invoices, we are asking that you focus particularly on the small and medium size businesses, who are those most likely to be struggling in the current economic climate.

For more information relating to invoice processing timescales and our existing national performance indicators view the attached document.