The leader of Nottingham City Council says its new budget and plan has not yet been "fully-costed" after a councillor raised concerns ahead of the looming judgement day.
The Labour-led authority has a legal duty to balance its books and its progress is being monitored closely by a Government-appointed Improvement and Assurances Board, led by Sir Tony Redmond, following the collapse of Robin Hood Energy.
It must present a fully-costed budget, as well as an already delayed medium-term financial plan, to full council in March.
If the Government is not appeased by the council's own progress it will send in commissioners, which could cost the tax payer £1,200 per day, to take control of some operations.
Despite March now being less than a month away it is understood costing exercises of all the council's operations are still taking place.
Giving an update as to the current situation the leader of the council, Dales ward councillor David Mellen, said: "I think there is still work to be done on the culture of the organisation and how that appears to various of our customers, partners and to the city as a whole.
"In terms of the constitution there is training planned for councillors coming up soon I believe.
"Our levels of borrowing are much lower, they have been reduced significantly, and national and other publications which talk about us having over £1bn debt are out of date and there has been improvement there. We adopted the borrowing cap that the improvement board imposed on us.
"We've got some very high value assets in the city and we are wanting to make sure progress is made, so for example Angel Row is currently in planning, Guildhall there are changes there, that has been a long-standing property. Some of our asset sales are small, couple of hundred thousand pounds for an old community centre in my ward, and other things are several millions of pounds."
The budget was discussed during a scrutiny committee meeting on Wednesday, February 9.
A recent budget proposal consultation yielded hundreds of responses.
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It was said 300 people participated through events, 632 responses came through an online survey, a further 63 through email, nine in person and eight online.
Some 44% of responses concerned the planned closure of six of nine children's centres and almost seven in 10 people expressed their thoughts over impacts to services for children.
Some concern, and support, was given for the planned changes to parking permit schemes.
Under the current scheme residents get up to three permits, including visitor passes, for free.
The new proposals would impose charges on all permits after the first.
"We are still considering those responses to see if there are any changes we should be making," councillor Mellen added.
Andrew Rule, who represents Clifton West for the Conservatives, questioned whether the new budget had been "fully-costed" or was even "demonstrably good value for money", after the director for finance was quoted saying it was not.
He asked the leader if this had now changed.
Councillor Mellen said it was not yet fully-costed but costing work was ongoing.
He added: "I would imagine that costing exercise is probably not yet complete but there is a sense in which things were only put in the council plan in the first place because we knew we had the resource to be able to complete that."
The budget will again be discussed during an Executive Board meeting on February 22.
"Frustration" was also voiced at the delayed response from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with the advice it then gives likely now out of date.
The Improvement and Assurances Board submits its latest findings roughly every quarter to inform the department on the council's progress.
The department then responds.
It was due to reply at the end of last year but the council is yet to receive any communication.
