Meeting documents

The Committee considered this report that accompanied the following agenda item and report on the Council’s Medium Tern Financial Plan (2019-2022).  The report provided an update on decisions made in relation to the Children’s Service MTFP budget setting process and how recommendations arising from the PeopleToo review and financial plan had been incorporated and progressed.

The Committee was reminded that following a Corporate Peer Review last year the Council had commissioned a review from Peopletoo, as recommended by the Local Government Association (LGA). The work

undertaken between June and September last year was a review of current budgets and existing practice and process across Children’s Services, both Children’s social care and Education, and it identified potential areas of opportunity to safely reduce the projected spend and developed evidenced recommendations to help ensure future sustainability of the service.

Significant elements of the three-year programme and recommendations including a financial plan arising from the review were considered by the Senior Leadership Team and Cabinet in September 2018. The Director for Children’s Services and Interim Director of Finance have taken these recommendations and elements into account when resetting the Children’s Services budget for 2019/20 and the following 3 years as part of reflecting the known service funding and future demand pressures including MTFP savings.

Attention turned to Appendix A of the report that set out the Financial Plan for Children’s Services (2019 – 2022) and it was noted that further proposals had been developed offering savings to the budget. Additional recommendations had been made in relation to the High Needs element of the Dedicated Schools Grant, those required further work before recommendations could be fully considered.

It was noted that a key theme of the PeopleToo recommendations was to support the improvement of children’s commissioning and further develop joint commissioning opportunities with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), District Councils, Public Health and Adult Social Care. It was reported that initial PeopleToo feedback, including moving to a ‘statutory minimum service’, had informed key policy decisions at last September’s Cabinet meeting.

It was agreed that it was important to continue transformation work in particular with work on systems with partner organisations to make it easier and more efficient with sharing information and using data.