Issue - meetings

(Report by Mr K Abbott, Director, Resources and Planning Group and Mr G Ward, Director, Capital and Infrastructure Group)

(1)         The Committee considered the fifth report on the forecast outturn against budget for the Children Families and Education (CFE) Directorate for 2009/10 financial year, which was based on the third full quarterly monitoring report that had been presented to the Cabinet on 29 March 2010.

(2)         The Chairman asked Mr Abbott and Mr Ward to introduce the report.

(3)         Mr Abbott highlighted the key issues in the revenue budget, which included that the Directorate predicted an underspend of £2,001k (excluding Schools and Asylum), which was a movement of £1m since in the last report to the Committee.  The two key factors for this was; SEN Transport where a lot of transport runs were cancelled due to the prolonged period of heavy snow, and the impact of the contract negotiations being carried out by the Passenger Transportation Unit.  There was an increase in the underspend of over £½m, which reflected the continuing difficulty to recruit Social Workers.    Although the Asylum funding was not reflected in the £2m underspend of the Directorate there was the significant change on the position of Asylum funding. The forecast shortfall had been reduced by just over £1m, which was a direct result of the conclusions in the negotiations with the UK Border Agency (UKBA).  UKBA had agreed to payback £2.3m, in respect of the additional costs incurred in 2008/9/10, half of that was reflected in the 2009/10 financial year was now reflected in the forecast.  He concluded that the final figures for the schools reserves would be submitted to the Committee in the Summer.

(4)         Mr Ward then spoke on the key aspects reflected in the capital budget advising that the figures reflected the position statement at the end of December 2009.  The figures also reflected the cash limit adjustments that were made as part of the County Council Budget, which left a figure that suggested a £99k overspend on the capital programme, which was covered by the revenue contribution, this did mask the previous levels of slippage which had been adjusted as it moved along the formal approval process for the new capital programme.  One of the challenges now until the end of the year was the impact of the adverse weather and what it had done to a significant number of the building schemes, whilst special schools were being rolled out the delay had caused in slippage in expenditure but more challenging the impact it had on planned openings of schools.  He advised that colleagues in Corporate Property and some schools had to work through new time lines to ensure the schools could open at the start of the academic new year.

(5)         Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments which included the following:

(6)         In response to questions by Mr Tolputt, Mr Abbott advised that; the figure of £6m was the forecast of the reserves that schools would be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24