Agenda item

A)  Draft 2013/14 Budget

The Committee considered a report of the Portfolio Holder’s Draft 2013/14 Budget which incorporated future cost pressures and initial draft budget saving options.  This had been reported to Executive on 9 January 2013. Members considered the initial draft budget savings proposed.

The Portfolio Holder addressed the committee requesting that they provide comments on the budget for him to feed back to Executive on 6^th February. The Executive requested that each PDS Committee consider the proposed initial draft budget savings and cost pressures for their Portfolio and the views of each PDS Committee be reported back to the next meeting of the Executive, prior to the Executive making recommendations to Council on 2013/14 Council Tax levels.

There were still outstanding issues and areas of uncertainty remaining. Any further updates would be included in the 2013/14 Council Tax report to the next meeting of the Executive.

Members raised a number of points:

1.  Concerns about the funding of Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) in Beckenham and Penge, the suitability of outreach centres and that they may be unable to provide a service to the numbers of people currently accessing it.  This issue is also the subject of a motion to full Council.

The Portfolio Holder reported that at the recent CAB AGM there had been a very positive response to the changes that had been made to provide outreach services.

2.  That the proposed changes to Older People’s Day Centres was putting the providers in a position where they may be unable to provide a service going forward. This issue was the subject of a report elsewhere on the agenda.

The Chairman and one of the members of the Committee had recently visited a Day Centre where they were looking at a way of extending their service offer to cover breakfast and possibly to open on a Saturday and Sunday.

A fuller breakdown of the attendance figures may have been helpful to understand how many people attended for how many days.

3,  Section 4.3 of the report highlighted the impact of an ageing population Members were concerned that adequate resources were in place to undertake the required assessment functions. Members also asked what modelling had been undertaken to profile the demands.  Officers explained that it was based on population statistics, past trends and the impact of key service areas already modelled.  Consideration was then given to the available funds and how these could be best utilised.

4.  Whether there would be any changes following the Kershaw report. 

Officers explained that once the report was accepted by the Secretary of State Officers would begin working with the CCG and Kings.

5.  The representative for Bromley Council on Ageing reported that at a recent partnership meeting concerns and been expressed that the calculations quoted took account of the potential rise in dementia cases. The suggestions for day centres suggested alternatives which dementia sufferers would not be able to access. 

6.  Members noted that £1m was set aside in the contingency for the potential impact of the welfare reform. It was agreed that the Committee should receive a paper on the impact of the welfare reform changes and the policy for using discretionary payments to mitigate the impact for key groups of people affected by the changes at its March meeting.

7.  Concerns that the report referred to closure of an extra care housing scheme.  Officers explained that this was not a specific proposal.  The older extra care housing schemes were gradually being replaced as new schemes were available to replace them. . 

The Chairman asked that the wording was changed to reflect this.

8.  In relation to the under spend in reablement the Director was keen to highlight that this was an indication of the success of this service. As the service continued to improve the outcomes for those who were using the service, i.e. more people requiring less intensive support following reablement, it was able to reduce costs.

It was noted generally that the PDS had debated the majority of items in the report previously or were contained elsewhere on the agenda.

RESOLVED that: 

1. The update on the financial forecast for 2013/14 to 2015/16 is noted;

2.  The initial draft saving options proposed by the Executive for 2013/14 are noted.

3.  The initial draft 2013/14 Budget as a basis for setting the 2013/14 Budget is noted;

4. Members comments on the initial draft 2013/14 Budget, as outlined above, are reported to the February meeting of the Executive.