Agenda item

Report DCYP10112

The Committee considered a report providing Members with the first budget monitoring position for 2010/11 based on spending up until the end of May 2010.  As in previous years, the financial information was separated between the schools’ budget – funded from the Dedicated Schools’ Grant and specific grants, and the non-schools – budget funded from Council Tax, Revenue Support Grant and specific grants.  The schools’ budget funded from the DSG was forecast to underspend by £72,000 in 2010/11.  However, there was a deficit carried forward from the previous financial year of £185,000, making the net forecast by the end of this year a deficit of £113,000.  There was provision within the central schools’ budget contingency to offset this forecast overspend.  The controllable part of the non-schools’ budget was forecast to overspend by £890,000.  However, this was after allowing for management action to use resources efficiently in the Children’s Social Care Services (staffing and placements) and use of grants to offset existing expenditure.  Details were provided in paragraph 3.6 of the report.

The Head of CYP Finance introduced the report and outlined the budget pressures that would be affecting the department into the future.

The Portfolio Holder expressed the hope that the Government’s amount of a review of children’s social care would assist in addressing the broad range of difficulties experienced by the Local Authority in relation to recruitment and retention of social workers.

The Committee considered a number of aspects of the report and a Member asked what steps the department had taken to rationalise the education estate.  The Director CYP outlined the Local Authority’s framework for the review of school place capacity, school organisation and projected demand.  Members had received reports and the Portfolio Holder had approved an increase in capacity at three primary schools given the rise in pupil numbers.  The Local Authority had a strong track record in identifying opportunities to change school organisation through amalgamations, closures and where appropriate developing new provision.  The challenging financial context would require detailed consideration of efficient models of school organisation and that would be under review by the CYP PDS Working Party during Autumn 2010.

A Member questioned the cause of the underspend on nursery placements and asked whether the forecasts had been inaccurate or whether there had been less uptake of places.  The Head of CYP Finance reported that forecasts for 3 and 4 year old children were the hardest to undertake and that an explanation of why numbers of 3 and 4 year olds did not correlate with the numbers of places would be reported back to the Committee.

Another Member asked for an update on the success of the Riverside facility, and the Assistant Director (Access and Inclusion) reported that the facility had been thriving since it opened in January 2010.  The facility had initially opened with around 20 pupils and by September 37 pupils would be enrolled, this eventually rising to 45 pupils.  The Assistant Director stressed that without the new Riverside provision all these pupils would have been placed out-of-borough and whilst the level of out-of-borough placements was not reducing this was because of a significant increase in volumes of children and other areas of development of provision in Bromley were being identified.

RESOLVED that the Portfolio Holder be recommended to:

(i)  consider the projected variations, note the service pressures, especially in Children’s Social Care Services;

(ii)  endorse the latest budget position and note the action being taken to minimise the forecast overspend;

(iii)  recommend to the Executive that it approves the inclusion of the following Specific Grants to departmental budgets:

  (a)  Surestart Aiming High For Disabled Children - £25,000

  (b)  14-19 Prospectus - £11,000

  (c)  Fair Play Playbuilder - £18,000

(iii)  recommend to the Executive that it approves the inclusion of the following Area Based Grants to departmental budgets:

  (d)  Think Family - £22,000

  (e)  January Guarantee - £27,000

  These Area Based Grants would be applied to reduce the overspending in Children's Social Care.  Details of all these new and additional grants are given in paragraph 3.11 of the report.

(iv)  Note and agree to the brought forward balances, highlighted in Appendix 8 of the report, being made available to the respective services in 2010/11 as follows:

  (f)  To Youth Services and Office Services £27,642

  (g)  To Standards & Achievement £109,765.