Agenda item

(Report by Mrs Rosalind Turner, Managing Director, Children, Families and Education Directorate, Mrs Sarah Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children, Families & Education)

(1)    The Committee received a report that identified the proposed strategy for determining next year’s budget and the financial plans for the following two years.  This included the latest indications of likely pressures facing the Children, Families and Education portfolio, suggested areas for service improvements and the savings that may be needed in order to set a realistic three year budget plan.

(2)         The Chairman reminded Members that an Informal Member Group (IMG) to discuss the Medium Term Plan had been commissioned at the meeting held on 18 September with a Membership of 6, (2 Members from each of the 3 Children, Families and Education Policy Overview and Scrutiny Committees (POSCs)).  Chaired by Mr K Smith, the IMG met on Tuesday, 17 November to discuss suggested savings and priorities to inform this Committee. 

(3)         The Chairman asked Mr Abbott to introduce the report.  Mr Abbott advised that the report set out the latest information on the known pressures for the portfolio and highlighted areas of possible service improvements, which were needed to set a realistic budget for the next three years.   The format of the papers was in the standard form for all the POSCs. 

(4)         Mr Abbott explained that it was already in the public domain that KCC had to reduce its spending by £200m over the next 3 years and as part of that all Directorates were set targets for efficiency savings in respect of staffing and procurement activity.  The CFE Directorate’s target was £9.4m and savings totalling that had been identified and included in the report. 

(5)         Delivery of those efficiency savings and a robust stance on pay and prices in light of the current inflation still left savings of £130m needed across the County Council.  Each of the POSCs had been tasked to find 10% savings of £130m. 

(6)         The issues for the CFE Directorate included; the Directorate was in a unique position as 85% of its spending, £1.36b on revenue came from central government grants and 15% equal to £210m was funded directly by KCC.  The set of challenges were to identify savings of 2/3rds part funded by KCC related to Home to School Transport and Children Social Care and included a number of risks of a high level of dependency on government specific grants given the financial climate.

(7)         At recent staff and school briefings the key principles were advised in setting the Medium Term Plan, which were primarily; to protect the front line services, reduce overheads and administration, increase efficiency and maximise income. The priorities for CFE were set out in the Young Person’s Plan, (summarised in appendix 4 of the report). Mr Abbott advised that the financial climate was going to be difficult over the next 3 years especially with the rise in expectation on the services. 

(8)         The County Council had identified as part of the £200m that there could be a loss of 600-700 posts across the County Council. CFE Directorate had already advised its staff that there could be a reduction of 160 – 200 posts over the next 3 years. With regard to pay, the proposals, detailed in appendix 5, page 45 of the report, provide the known impact of the national pay awards; teachers and Sole Broom Scheme staff (Not sure if this is right).  For 2010/11 there had been no proposal for Kent Scheme Staff as there were no proposals yet.

(9)         Mr Abbott explained that page 49 of the report sets out the efficiency and restructuring savings of £7.5m for staffing and £1.9m for procurement activity.  The £7.5m gave the target figures for the new Service Groups that were set up under the interim arrangements for the Directorate following the County Council meeting in October following the approval to the Senior Structure in June.  The Directors were still working on proposals for the new structure which would be finished at the end of December 2009. At the time when the County Council budget proposals were published the Directorate would be able to move into a formal consultation with staff about the staffing impact.

(10)    Mr Smith who chaired of the IMG on Medium Term Plan (IMG MTP) that met on 17 November spoke on the deliberations and the conclusions of the IMG MTP.   He advised that the IMG considered 45 areas where savings could be made and areas that they wished to remove from the overall list of savings options presented by Officers.  The table below totalling £13m represented those savings which Members of the IMG would not want to be taken forward:

(11)     Mr Smith advised that each of the Policy Overview and Scrutiny Committees (POSCs) were looking at the budgets within their portfolios and as a result of the preparations of the Officers Members were able to follow this complex exercise for which he thanked them.  He felt that the process for Members to scrutinise the budget needed to be developed with an aim to form best practise for the future. 

(12)     In response to a question by Mr Tolputt, Mr Abbott advised that about 10% of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) funded the Local Authority and the rest went directly to schools and the early years providers.  He agreed to provide a summary of this to Members outside the meeting. The government settlement for next year had confirmed that the DSG would be increased by 4.2%.   The budgets set for schools this year would hold good for next year.  For the Local Authority this meant for the services currently funded from DSG there would be a £3m increase, Kent had to deal with the pay increase in line with inflation.  There was ongoing work undertaken with other local authorities on what to charge the DSG.  Mr Abbott explained that the government was consulting with service users on what could and could not be charged to the DSG and the role and remit of the Schools Funding Forum.  It was difficult at present to charge integrated services to the DSG this would need approval by the DCSF.

(13)     In response to a question by Mr Chittenden, Mrs Turner explained that the headings that were discussed by the IMG MTP were both discretionary and statutory items but the issue was at what level those services were delivered; eg Educational Psychology was statutory, Kent Music School was discretionery but there must be an entitlement to music education in schools.  Mr Cooke added that the discussions of the IMG were mindful to avoid any impact on vulnerable children and frontline services.  He wised to thank Officers for all the work that they had undertaken to produce the budget papers.

(14)     In reply to a question by Mr Pugh, Mrs Turner advised that there was still recruitment to Social Worker vacancies.  There had been a delay in the additional investment in frontline social work and getting the staff in post which was being resolved.  There was a national shortage of Social Workers.  There had been success in recruiting newly qualified English Social Workers as well as from abroad; Canada and the USA, who would be well supported and trained on procedures and the cultural expectations.  She assured Members that although there was a real deficit in retaining  and having enough experienced qualified Social Workers eg Senior Practitioners in Kent a great deal of effort was being applied to retraining existing Social Workers.  Unfortunately, this was exacerbated with the increase in referrals that were meeting the requirement for a child protection plan that was leading to pressures on fostering services and Looked After Children (LAC) services.

(15)          In response to questions by Mr Sweetland on the Children’s Occupational Therapy Service (OTS), Mrs Turner explained that following the separation of the Adult Social Services and Children Social Services there was a deficit in the children’s OTS element of the service and there had been difficulties in getting that back to a proper level in terms of funding, which had now been found and in finding experienced staff. Mrs Turner had been assured that recruitment was underway and would be shortly back up to speed. There was still concern with the back log of cases, which Officers would be working to bring down which may entail bringing in agency staff. Referring to funding Mrs Turner advised that this was complex as it involved funding from both KCC for assessments, Health Authorities for equipment and funding that the Districts held in regard to housing.   Officers had been carrying out work with Housing and Health to look at working in a more efficient way by pooling resources.  She was optimistic that this was the way forward for total place for children and families.

(16)          In response to a question by Mrs Rook, Mr Ward replied that there was a real challenge on how much was being spent on protecting our empty facilities.  Officers in Corporate Property Services were doing what they could to; dispose of some sites, retain sites until the property prices rose or change of use was agreed for a site.   The aim was to keep the expenditure down but also to protect the Local Authority’s interest with regard to liability and protect those that go on those sites.  Mr Cook added that this partly came about because of the success and expansion of the capital programme as more renovation work was being carried out through Building Schools for the Future (BSF) more buildings became redundant from prior use, he felt that the pressure was a good thing and indicative of the excellent work being carried out in other areas.   

(17)          In response to a further question by Mrs Rook, Mr Abbott explained that the pressure on maternity pay within the report did not include paternity pay because those figures shown were regarding schools and through the Dedicated Schools Grant the Authority funded certain costs for maternity pay.  The scheme only covered maternity, if schools wished it to cover paternity this would have to be discuss with the Schools Funding Forum as this would be a budget pressure. With regard to the units within the Directorate any cost of maternity or paternity leave had to be funded from within the units’ budget. 

(18)          In reply to a question by Mr Sweetland, Mr Abbott explained that the information on page 31 of the report referred to the whole range of staff in the Local Children Services Partnerships (LCSPs) at present, what this would look like in the future would be part of the restructuring proposals that were currently being worked on, details would be available in January as part of the Directorate review.   Mrs Turner added that everything we did should be based on excellent outcomes for children.  The review of the LCSPs was a commitment to driving forward the Kent Children’s Trust that had been in existence for a year.  The schools were part of the Partnership and were being listened to as part of the LSCPs review.  Mr Abbott concluded that more work had to be carried out on how the school representatives on the Partnerships fed back the issues to the group of schools that they represented.

(19)          Mr Smith suggested that the schools should be asked “what is the service doing for you?”  The services were there to help the schools and the pupils. Mrs Turner suggested that this issue needed to be discussed at a future meeting of the Vulnerable Children and Partnerships POSC as the issue dealt with part of the Kent Children’s Trust. Mr Smith added that a school visit could be included too.  The Chairman gave permission for Mrs Allen, Chairman of the Vulnerable Children and Partnerships POSC to speak.  Mrs Allen advised that the POSC was due to discuss the LCSPs at a future meeting.

(20)          RESOLVED that:-

      (a)       the comments and request made by Members in the paragraphs above be noted; 

            (b)       the proposals in the report be noted; and

      (c)        the 7 areas of savings, which were considered by Members of the IMG to be omitted from the overall  list of savings to be taken forward as detailed in paragraph (10) above be  noted.