Issue - meetings

(Report byMr K Abbott (Director Resources and Planning Group, Ms R Turner, Managing Director, Children, Families & Education Directorate and Mrs S Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children, Families & Education)

(1)         The Committee considered a report thatidentified the proposed strategy for determining next year’s budget and the financial plans for the following years.  This included an initial analysis of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2010, the likely impact on the overall funding for KCC, the indicative cash limit for the Children, Families and Education portfolio, and the latest indications of likely pressures facing the Children, Families and Education portfolio.

(2)         The Chairman asked Mr Abbott to introduce the report.  Mr Abbott highlighted that much of the detailed information was to come through the local government settlement in early December particularly information on specific grants and the dedicated schools grant which would be coming from the DFE following the Local government settlement.  This was crucial as the £1.4b spent each year of which £1.2b was received through government grants.  Many of the grants would be unringfenced and a lot of the specific grants to schools were being moved to the overall dedicated schools grant.

(3)         In response to a question by Mr Vye about the staffing underspend in the monitoring and the impact on the MTP , Mr Abbott explained that the forecast underspend on staffing would be the level of vacancy saving on the staffing at year end.  At the end of the last financial year there was a £3.7m underspend.  All of the work carried out in particular in recruiting front line social workers was beginning to have an impact which was why the forecast was lower.  One reason why that figure would not go down further in the current year was that a number of staff recruited had only recently taken up post and therefore there was a part year saving. As now all the money in that budget would be used for recruiting and funding front line social workers.  There was and additional £4.8m in the revised budget and cash limit for the pressures of fostering and adoption and 16+ as it was recognised that they need funding and, in line with the policy of previous years we would not be relying on funding from the social worker vacancies as part of the MTP process. The current vacancies were actively being filled.

(4)         Mr Cooke advised that as the pupil premium became clear advice would be given to Members and would be added to the items to be covered in the Members briefing in the Spring.

(5)         In response to questions by Mr Tolputt, Mr Abbott advised that the pupil premium was a significant new income stream to schools depending on the circumstances.  The Secretary of State was clear that the pupil premium would be a separate grant and would be an addition to the existing mechanisms.  There was  an issue in that the position had moved from saying that it was completely funded from outside  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45