Meeting documents

To consider a report by the Chief Financial Officer (attached).

The Committee considered the report which provided information on the forecast of outturn against the budget for the 2016/17 financial year based on the latest information from Directorates. 

Councillor Jill Haynes, as the Cabinet Member for Adult Health, Care and Independence explained that budgets had been delegated downwards to middle managers to provide greater levels of accuracy and, following a second round of performance management training, she felt confident that managers had gained the necessary insight into their budgets that had resulted in a savings plan based on reliable facts and figures. 

She highlighted that although the number of people in adult social care had not increased, the packages were becoming more complex and expensive and there was a need to challenge whether some of these should be funded by the NHS due to medical need.  A new way of commissioning care with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) would also be launched in November 2017 that would produce economies of scale.

Councillor Deborah Croney, as the Cabinet Member for Learning, Skills and Children’s Safeguarding, stated that the work and activity to improve the financial situation had been articulated in a report to Cabinet on 18 January 2017.  She described the main budgetary pressures in relation to the number of children in care and agency spend.

Members asked how the overspend in 2016/17 would be financed in order to balance the budget and were advised that money would be used from general balances and specific reserves and that there was some flexibility on the use of capital budget receipts. 

The Committee considered the current situation to be extremely disturbing, and were mindful that it would not be possible to continue to fund overspending in future.  They were advised that whilst the overview and scrutiny committees had considered some specific budget areas as a result of a request from the Audit and Governance Committee, at present, financial oversight predominately rested with this committee.  However, more detailed budget consideration was the focus of other internal officer and member meetings, such as the Budget Strategy Task and Finish Group.

Councillor Robert Gould, the Leader of the Council, stated that although the transformational work was critical, the long term solution lay in better integration between the health service and adult social care and was a general solution that could only be implemented at a national level. 

Members expressed concern that the Internal Audit report had identified two areas of budget management as being of significant risk and wished to know the specific areas highlighted by this audit.

The Assistant Director (SWAP) informed the Committee that the areas highlighted in the report had not been assessed as fundamental weaknesses and that the actions picked up during the audit were being addressed and could be identified in the sample. 

Members were informed that in order to address the issues identified in the audit, there had been a focus on disaggregating budgets from senior management level to a lower level in the organisation, together with the implementation of a stronger reporting and accountability framework. 

The Committee asked for work to continue on detailed analysis of the budget to identify further savings and that it should also be made clear that the council would run out of money if this situation continued.

Noted