Agenda item

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health and the Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement and Deputy Leader, to note the draft budget and Medium Term Financial Plan and suggest any other issues which should be reflected in them, prior to Cabinet on 23 January and County Council on 9 February.

Mr D Shipton, Head of Financial Strategy, and Miss M Goldsmith, Finance Business Partner, Social Care, Health and Wellbeing, were in attendance for this item.

1.            Mr Shipton introduced the report and gave a brief overview of the County Council’s budget for the 2017/18 financial year, which, he explained, was similar to those of the past six years. In its 2017/18 budget, the Council needed to:

·         fund a further £66m to complete the statutory service framework on which it was required to set its annual budget,

·         accommodate a £46m reduction in Government funding,

·         find an additional £34m from council tax.  This would be made up of a growth in the council tax base (ie an increase in the number of households paying council tax) and an increase of 1.9%, plus 2.0% social care levy, permitted by government. Local Authorities had been permitted by the Government to increase council tax by a maximum of 6% over three years (with no one year having an increase above 3%), and the County Council had consulted upon and committed to an increase of 2.0% in 2017/18 and the next two years, and

·         find a further £78m of savings.

2.            He went on to explain that the County Council’s medium term (ie 2015/16 – 2019/20) spending was based on ‘flat-cash’, the total of which was currently in the second year of a two-year dip, meaning the 2017/18 financial year should be less challenging.  The term ‘flat-cash’ meant there would be no overall additional funding for rising costs or demand pressures, so these would have to be covered by savings and spending reductions. The County Council had assumed that it would have discretion to use some of this flat-cash to fund social care.

3.            The County Council’s public consultation exercise had indicated that 75% of Kent residents supported an increase in council tax to help fund social care, while past consultations had shown that if the public were helped to understand the link between increasing council tax and funding social care, they were more likely to support an increase.

4.            Miss Goldsmith introduced the three appendices to the budget report and explained that these were set out in the same way as the sections in the Budget book and Medium Term Financial Plan.

5.            Mr Shipton, Miss Goldsmith, Mr Ireland and Mrs Tidmarsh responded to questions from Members, as follows:-

a)     a saving had been forecast in direct payments as the number of people purchasing services by using a direct payment had declined steadily in recent years;

b)    the budget allocation for domiciliary care services had been realigned to respond to patterns in demand for services;

c)    in a few places, the figures presented in the budget appendices published with Cabinet Committee agendas earlier in the month differed from those in the Budget book published later as there had been some budget movement in the interim.  In such cases, figures presented in the Budget book were the most up-to-date. Miss Goldsmith undertook to look into a specific example quoted and reply to the questioner outside the meeting; 

d)     demand for domiciliary care and enablement services had increased, and this was due partly to the success of the Kent Enablement at Home (KEaH) scheme as part of phase 2 of Social Care Transformation. Members were reassured that phase 3 of the transformation would increase the level of integration between these services and the NHS, and it was expected that, as a result of this integration, more services could be delivered for the same cost, achieving better value for money;

e)     the budget listed for older people’s non-residential charging was lower than previously as the budget had been realigned to take account of the increased level of client income that the County Council could take into account when calculating charges;

f)       it was assumed that more savings could be made in services for those over 18 with a learning disability as the net cost of services per head had been reduced by the ‘your life your home’ project, as part of the transformation programme;

g)     in response to a question about funding for nursing services for older people, relating to an increasing number of older people living longer with long-term conditions, Miss Goldsmith and Mrs Tidmarsh undertook to check the reduction and the reasons for it and reply to the questioner outside the meeting.  Taking long-term residential and nursing care together, a decrease in demand would be expected as an increasing number of people were enabled to return home with support;

h)     Mr Shipton explained that detailed variation statements would be produced for each line of the A-Z service analysis, which would give more detail of patterns of change and how these related to each other, and these would be sent to all Members as soon as possible before discussion of the budget by the County Council on 9 February 2017;

i)       despite services for people living with dementia being a key priority for the County Council, there was no separate line of the budget relating to these. This was because many people accessing a range of services were living with some form or level of dementia, often alongside other conditions.  Dementia Friendly Communities appeared in the budget but were not separated out; and

j)        services giving support to prevent social isolation were welcomed, as the impact of this, especially upon older people, must not be overlooked. Mrs Tidmarsh agreed the importance of this and explained that services which would guard against social isolation appeared throughout the budget.

6.                  RESOLVED that:-

a)    the draft budget and Medium Term Financial Plan (including responses to consultation and Government announcements) be noted; and

b)    comments made by the Committee be noted by the Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement and Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, prior to Cabinet on 23 January 2017 and County Council on 9 February 2017.