Issue - meetings

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

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

The Committee received a presentation on 2023/24 Children’s Services budget monitoring position - month 7, focussing on – external placements monitoring & forecasting, CLA key cost drivers and the 23/24 DSG budget monitoring (High Needs, home to school transport and SEND transport).

Noted that the council is refreshing the DSG Deficit Management Plan (DMP) and will bring this to scrutiny in March so the committee can see what is being proposed.

The Committee received a presentation from Christian Evans, the Council’s Head of Business Partnering Finance and colleagues on the 2023/24 Children’s Services month 7 budget monitoring position. The presentation focussed on external placements monitoring and forecasting, CLA key cost drivers and the 23/24 DSG budget monitoring (High Needs, home to school transport and SEND transport).

Mr Evans explained that the discussion on the previous agenda item on the Sufficiency Strategy for Somerset had provided good context to this item.

The Committee asked a number of questions and made a number of comments which were responded to at the meeting, as follows:

·      Query about the High Needs (HN) deficit (slide 8) – there is a programme of work going on to look at mitigations around reversing the deficit on the HN block and to return the in year overspends to zero; there is also the national context (problem) and Somerset is not ‘out of line’; the government put in place two different types of activity in place and Somerset is in tranche 1 of the Delivering Better Value project; have done work with Newton Europe but this work is very unlikely to reduce the deficit to zero entirely.; referenced the Deficit Management Plan which will be brought to scrutiny so can understand what are proposing.

Highlighted the main issue and concern that the deficit is effectively underwritten by the government but from 2026 the government is planning to essentially stop underwriting the HN deficit, which will have a huge financial impact on this authority, and probably nearly every upper tier authority in the country.

·      Ms Simons, who represents the Schools Forum on the committee mentioned that the Schools Forum is involved in the HN discussions and will update the committee on these discussions.

·      Question on the CLA key cost drivers (slide 7) and volatility in charges / costs in sector – this is due to several sort of different pressures and drivers in the system and some of the drivers are – needs and complexity, long term effects of covid, cost of living crisis, practical changes, working hard at all levels of the system, commissioning changes, the market trajectory and effects on availability in the market place, lack of sufficiency in fostering which means using more residential care and hence the importance of the work to increase the number of foster carers and keep improving both quality as well as reducing the overall cost.

The Vice Chair briefly summarised the discussions at the meeting – data driven, budget monitoring, cost drivers, noting that the council is refreshing the DSG Deficit Management Plan (DMP) and will bring this to scrutiny committee in March so the committee can see what is being proposed.

The Vice Chair thanked officers for the presentation and the Committee noted budget position.