Agenda item

This report details the revenue budget forecasts as at the end of

September 2015.

The Chief Finance Officer introduced this report which detailed the revenue

budget forecasts as at the end of September 2015 and drew Members’ attention

to the forecast overspend for 2015/16 which was estimated at £5.9m and

represented a £1.2m adverse movement relative to the position reported to

Cabinet on 25 August. This was primarily due to increasing pressures in relation

to the number of ‘Looked After Children’. A Member asked if the situation had improved or worsened in October and November. The Chief Finance Officer replied that Quarter 3 monitoring had not been completed.

Some Members felt that the financial management of budgets in children’s social care required much greater scrutiny, acknowledging that all Members would want to see this vital service given adequate resources. In particular the repeated overspends on approved budgets was a real concern and undermined the important role Full Council had in setting the budget.  In response the Chief Finance Officer and the Chief Executive replied that management actions were in place aimed at stopping children being taken into care in the first place and reducing unit costs when this did happen. An assurance was given that budgets in this area received the same level of scrutiny and challenge as elsewhere in the Council, but this had to be seen in the context of children’s services being a very challenging service to provide within approved budgets and many other councils were experiencing similar problems. As an example of the difficulties involved, one young person accommodated in a secure unit would cost approximately £200,000 pa. Also, it was difficult to recruit and retain social workers and in spite of building into draft budgets estimated levels of vacancies it was difficult to be completely accurate and the subsequent high costs of employing agency workers exacerbated the situation.

The Chief Finance Officer and the Chief Executive added that the Council set its budget based on realistic and accurate assumptions but did not build in a contingency for overspends as this would impact on other services.  It was a matter for Council to set the budget and it was the responsibility of Cabinet to manage budgets within approved limits. A Member replied that it was possible the consequences of management actions to address the overspends could be leading to further costs being incurred later. Another Member felt that officers could only be expected to manage the budgets approved by Members as best they could and to take action if there were any overspends. It was suggested that the Director of Children and Adult Services or an Assistant Director could attend the next meeting to discuss in detail the assumptions made when setting budgets. It was agreed that for the 2016/2017 draft budget more detail would be included about the assumptions underpinning draft budgets.

A Member regretted the £1m reduction in the public health grant and commented that this was a service which could help reduce the number of children going into care.