Agenda and draft minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from our two co-opted members, the Rev. Tobie Osmond, Church of England Diocesan Representative, and Mary Cox, Roman Catholic Diocesan Representative.

To receive and note any declarations of interests in respect of any matters included on the agenda for consideration at this meeting.

(The other registrable interests of Councillors of Somerset Council, arising from membership of City, Town or Parish Councils and other Local Authorities will automatically be recorded in the minutes: City, Town & Parish Twin Hatters - Somerset Councillors 2023 )

No additional interests, new or updated declarations of interest were made at the meeting.

To approve the minutes from the previous meeting held on Monday, 21^st October 2024.

Draft minutes from the last meeting held on the 21^st of October 2024, were not visible on the website due to a technical error and thus were not approved. Chair recommended that these minutes would be approved at the next meeting along with the minutes from today’s meeting.

The Chair to advise the Committee of any items on which members of the public have requested to speak and advise those members of the public present of the details of the Council’s public participation scheme.

For those members of the public who have submitted any questions or statements, please note, a three minute time limit applies to each speaker and you will be asked to speak before Councillors debate the issue.

We are now live webcasting most of our committee meetings and you are welcome to view and listen to the discussion. The link to each webcast will be available on the meeting webpage, please see details under ‘click here to join online meeting’.

There were no questions asked, statements made or petitions presented.

To receive an update from the Service Manager, Governance Scrutiny. To assist the discussion, the following documents are attached:-

(a)  The Committee’s work programme

(b)  The Committee’s outcome tracker

Please use the following links to view the latest Somerset Council Forward Plans and Executive Forward Plan of planned key decisions that have been published on the Council’s website:

Somerset Council Forward Plans

Somerset Council Executive Forward Plan

The absence of the outcome tracker was noted. The Chair explained to the committee that this piece of work is under review to clean it up and make it up to date.

The Chair emphasised the importance of keeping an eye on the Executive Forward Plan and the Somerset Council forward Plans so that the committee members can raise anything that they wish to discuss, in these Scrutiny sessions, since it gives the members of this committee a chance to influence the overall decision-making process.

The Chair also made a request on behalf of the committee to the Executive members that this committee welcomes all opportunities to be a part of any big decisions, should they be brought forward here.

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

Note – the Chair will allow 20 minutes for this agenda item.

The Chair invited Christian Evans, Head of Business Partnering on the Children's Budget Monitoring Update for month 6.

The Committee discussed the presentation in detail and the following points were raised and responded to:  

·         The Chair sought clarity on the unachievable and at-risk elements mentioned in the presentation – national issue where lack of foster carers has led to about 20 children going to residential care, impacting the savings. Similarly, increased unregistered children’s placements numbers due to delay in annexes and pods. Huge pressure on the Thrive contracts due to housing stock and increased demands leading to a delay in our ability to move young people towards independent living.

·         Unachievable figures are surrounding the virtual school for children which the officer did not feel prepared to talk about due to the Head of Children’s Services being absent from the meeting.

·         At risk – residential placements – ongoing talks with providers to have lower cost residential services that align with the cohort of children who have a lower level of need.

·         How do announcements from Central Government about funding in relation to placements and prices affect our savings? – the officer reassured the committee that this would help us immensely if the Central Government is able to act on these announcements in a timely manner. A national framework would help us by stopping providers from increasing costs. Current indication is that there might be a 40% rise in provider costs next year. We have had feedback on our ongoing work which highlights that we are a preferred authority to work with.

·         A member sought clarity on why there is a delay on Homes and Horizons buildings and if that is the reason for increased unregistered numbers – previously there was a delay in recruiting a Planning Officer which has now gone through, however, if we had been on track then we wouldn’t have the unregistered children.

·         How is our home to school transport system working? – we have 900 children using this service and all complaints are dealt with in a two-stage review process. We are trying to reasonably bring the children and families to use a more central pick-up point on their registered route. Somerset’s work on the home to school scheme has been exemplary and is used as an example of good practice nationally.

·         What level of savings, if at all, have come from working with contractors on transport? – Small piece of assurance, there is a trial going on which has led to savings, but we are not rolling it out county-wide just yet simply to make sure it is the right decision in terms of quality and safety of the service users.

·         Is there anything that this Scrutiny Committee can do to encourage building implementation of Annexes (Homes and Horizons) faster? – All the planning is out of the way, ongoing discussions with various partners that are working together to agree on dates to get work done surrounding BT, National Grid etc, but delayed due to current  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

Note – the Chair will allow 40 minutes for this agenda item.

The Chair invited Phil Curd, Strategic Manager - Head of Education to present the agenda item: Sufficiency Strategy.

The following points were discussed:

·         Are there any highlighted concerns with the lack of placement for nursery in early years with the change in legislation? - general concerns across the county, number of funded places required has increased quite significantly and there not enough capital funding to address it in terms of the grant provided. DofE has now launched its new school-based nursery scheme that seeks applications from schools directly so the schools can create their own early years provision to offset some of the insufficiency issues that we're seeing right across the country.

·         We have built into that process a sense check that will allow schools to apply directly and use resources that we think we will need for mainstream school places in the next two or three years. Those applications must come into our early years team and if we approve them, then they can go back to the DofE.

·         With immigration as it is at the moment, where are those children going to school and have we built that into our model going forward in terms of school admissions? - we consider the migration in our overall pupil projections and what we do know that in in parts of Taunton, because of the NHS recruitment campaign, we are seeing significant movements, but it's also creating a lot of churn in our system. The NHS’ accommodation strategy has been to bring those families into central Taunton as a soft landing where they stay for a period of time and then they're expected to move again into a more permanent accommodation. Due to this there's a lot of turnovers in terms of seeking school places where there aren’t enough. Which leads to increased appeals because once these families move out, the places open up and often we don't have to do the appeal process.

·         It does generate a lot of work for the local authority because we then have to administer all of the appeals, both within education and democratic services. But then the appeals don't progress, and it is considered a waste of our resources. However, this happens in a very specific geographical area.

·         Do we have the power over academies as well as we would with our own schools? - academies are their own admissions authorities. They must consult on and publish their own admissions arrangements each year. They have to align with the admissions code, and they have to admit children in line with their own arrangements. Now, if they don't do that and the parent appeals then we will not defend the case on their (academies’) behalf. We will make it very clear that this isn't compliant, and it doesn't align with the admissions code and therefore, we would not defend them at the appeal and when that happens, the academy will generally back down, admit the child in line with its own arrangements, but other  ...  view the full minutes text for item 17.

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

Note – the Chair will allow 20 minutes for this agenda item.

This item was not presented due to the relevant officers’ absence and was recommended that it be deferred to the January 2025 meeting.

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

Note – the Chair will allow 30 minutes for this agenda item.

The Chair invited Fiona Phur, Partnerships Manager and members of the Somerset Care Councils to present this item: CYPP - CF Scrutiny Presentation - 9th December 2024

The following points were discussed:

·         The committee was very impressed with the work that went into this piece of work and was very supportive.

·         The presentation was very well received, and the members emphasised the importance of listening to people who have been through the services and give them a platform to share their voice.

·         What does the Pathway for Independence (P4I) look like in 2024? - it was recommissioned and all these young people helped with the recommissioning by working with Commissioners. It has been renamed as Thrive 16 plus.The YMCA's are still predominantly the providers because we don't have a big provider market for the numbers that we need and so therefore we have support workers in place.

·         There's a disjoint between what's in the metrics and what the young people want.

·         How do you obtain the voice of the child? - the voice of the child isn't about the spoken voice. It's about behaviour, body language. It's about. So, for example, we have what we call the sick and slick creatives because we have young people who really want to say things about their experience of being in care, but they don't want to do the more formal stuff like this. But they'll write a poem or a song, and that's still a voice that's still relevant in terms of how we engage.

This is a standing agenda item and will provide details of information sent to Committee members in between meetings, that cover the Committee’s policy areas.

1. LGA C&YP Bulletin – October 2024 – circulated on 5 November 2024
2. JTAI – response from the Chief Executive, NHS Somerset ICB – circulated on 5 November 2024
3. Information on the Annual Public Health Report 2024/25 – a call to action for a smokefree Somerset - circulated on 13 November 2024
4. Inclusion Financial Management & Control - audit report – circulated on 18 November 2024
5. Youth Justice Plan Report & Information on the HMIP Inspection – to be circulated (outcomes from Inspection and action plan will be an agenda item at February meeting).
6. Education item – Keeping children safe, helping families thrive– to be circulated

If Committee members have any questions or comments on the information, please contact the Committee Administrator on democraticservicesteam@somerset.gov.uk in the first instance and before the date of the meeting.

The Committee noted the following items for information:

1. LGA C&YP Bulletin – October 2024 – circulated on 5 November 2024
2. JTAI – response from the Chief Executive, NHS Somerset ICB – circulated on 5 November 2024
3. Information on the Annual Public Health Report 2024/25 – a call to action for a smokefree Somerset - circulated on 13 November 2024
4. Inclusion Financial Management & Control - audit report – circulated on 18 November 2024
5. Youth Justice Plan Report & Information on the HMIP Inspection – to be circulated (outcomes from Inspection and action plan will be an agenda item at February meeting).
6. Education item – Keeping children safe, helping families thrive– to be circulated