Agenda item

To receive a report by Sean Creamer, Corporate Director Finance and Commercial.

The Corporate Director of Finance and Commercial introduced the Report. He went through the headlines of the paper and the service specifics such as, the council’s overall revenue forecast was for a £12 million overspend which had worsened since quarter 1 and 2. The current overspend would result in the use of reserves, subject to any further mitigation identified throughout the year. In terms of capital, there had been a reprofiling exercise to look at the capital budget and profile spend. 

The Corporate Director for Economic Growth and Infrastructure informed that the SEND reform in 2014-15 meant that transport costs had increased by 8% year by year and Place budget had only increased by 3% year by year. Other challenges involved shortage of drivers due to COVID, higher fuel costs and inflation, which were also national issues. SWAP had carried out an Audit of home to school transport to reassure people that place was robust in contracts, markets, and placements. A transformation program had started and additional resource to help review individual cases. There needed to be better forecasting and modelling for parking. As income for car parks were over forecasted. The new fees and charges for planning would increase revenue by 30%.

The Executive Director for Corporate Development added that spend was being contained where possible for this financial year by vacancy management, reducing the number of consultants, agency workers and non-essential spend.

The Interim Corporate Director for Commissioning informed that the strategy over the past couple of years had been to work on suppressing or delaying demand and increased or decreased expenditure was heavily scrutinised. The budget strategy for adults was underpinned by the transformation plan which focused on demand management and commission care costs, which helped to balance pressures. There was a slight overspend on the adult care purchasing budget at 0.9% and tighter recruitment controls had been implemented.

The Corporate Director for Housing made the committee aware of the triple pressure of demand rising by around 20% from people coming to the service as homeless or potentially homeless. He highlighted some of the pressures such as, rents were rising above inflation, local costs were increasing, availability of housing were decreasing. He added that prevention was the key in reducing homelessness and the types of prevention which range from preventing a landlord evicting someone, working with families to re-unite individuals with their parents if they had been thrown out, finding the right temporary accommodation and making the best of the social housing stock. The main burden on finances was the expensive temporary accommodation. 

The Corporate Director for Care and Protection identified the three key areas of pressure were children in care placement budget, spend on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and spend on children with a disability. The biggest area of spend was the children in care placement budget and children in care population continued to be reduced. There had been more early support work carried out with families, less children in need status and children subject to child protection plans.

Noted