Andover Town Council is to refine its policy of investing thousands of pounds of public money after councillors raised issues with proposals.

The council’s Draft Investment Strategy is to be redrafted after councillors said that it was “too much of a placeholder” and needed to be more precise before any money could be used.

Councillor Luigi Gregori said refining the proposals are “not going to change the price of fish too much but it will set it on the way going forward.”

Andover Town Council’s Policy & Resources (P&R) Committee met on Wednesday, April 22, to discuss a number of items, including the Draft Investment Strategy.

Under the law, councils have the ability to invest “for any purpose relevant to its functions” as well as “for the purpose of prudent management of financial affairs.”

The draft presented to the council said that the council will only invest within the UK, and will maintain investments “purely to ensure the liquidity of council”.

“As much of its surplus balance as possible” will be invested in order to achieve its goals.

After the floor was opened for comment, Cllr Gregori said that the document as it stood was not fit for purpose.

“What we’re looking at isn’t really an investment strategy,” he said. “All it’s doing is telling us what we’re doing now, it’s not telling us what we should be doing looking to the future.

“One of the issues I’d have expected to see is our risk, which would be talking about the financial services compensation scheme and how we are approaching that and why we would need to have multiple accounts.

“I would expect some of that sort of stuff to be there, I think this is too much of a placeholder. Having looked at the investment strategy some years ago we really need to do a bit better.”

Cllr Rebecca Meyer, who has been trained in investment strategy, concurred, saying the document “doesn’t really say how safe or daring we’re being [with investments].”

Town clerk Wendy Coulter suggested officers could refine the document and bring it back to a future meeting, which was met with approval.

Cllr Gregori said: “Under the previous administration what we did was we looked at other town councils and we constructed an investment strategy as there’s a lot of useful templates.

“I agree with the town clerk, this should come back. The whole point of P&R is that it looks at financial policies and it shouldn’t just chuck this stuff up to full council. I think the town clerk’s right, it needs more work.”

He added: “It’s not going to change the price of fish too much but it will set it on the way going forward.”

The draft strategy will be brought to a future meeting of the council.