Transcript

Transcript

OK, colleagues, if we can just come to attention. Come on down. Good to see you all. Welcome to this multi-location cabinet meeting. Can I remind members that this meeting is being recorded and it's being webcast live. We've had apologies from Councillor Burke, who is doing well. Attending virtually are Councillors Lister and Berman. Nothing from the Common Ground Alliance group. No. OK. Are there any declarations of interest? No. OK. Item one are the minutes of the cabinet meeting on the 23rd of May 2024. Are we content to agree with these as a correct record? Thank you. Yeah. And can I say, because they were only here in observer status last time, but good to have Councillor Bridgman and Thompson with us, formerly as cabinet members after getting through the AGM process in May. I'm going to reorder the agenda slightly, if that's OK, just because I know Councillor Lister needs to leave. So I will take item three next, if we can. That's the corporate parenting advisory committee annual report of 23-24, a joint report between Education and Children's Services. Can I invite Councillor Lister to introduce the report? Thank you very much, leader. And hello from Brechon Deakins. Firstly, I'd like to start by introducing this report saying thank you to Councillor Mary as deputy leader for chairing the committee again over the year and other members of the committee for ensuring that children who are looked after remain high on our priority as a local authority. They're children in our care, so it's great to see members taking that interest. I'd like to also put on record my thanks to staff, in particular Matt and Lucy, for all the work that they do supporting Deborah and actually making sure over the past year that we've got out and spoken to different directorates across the council to make sure that there's that clear understanding that it is a corporate responsibility right across the council to support our children looked after. The report is now in the report, which just feeds back on the work of the committee, which again includes involvement and updates from multiple members on the different strategies we have to support our children looked after, whether that's the corporate parenting strategy itself, which is being refreshed, and the participation strategy to ensure that our children looked after have their voices heard as much as possible, or our accommodation strategy to make sure that there is the right choice at the right place at the right time to provide care for our children looked after. We've seen some real positives throughout the year. So again, our virtual school proving the impact that actually has on our children looked after's education, bringing it all into one place, and Deborah's local leadership working with the team to support children both in-county and out-of-county with their educational attainment, but also has highlighted challenges which we continue to raise, both myself at my levels with colleagues in health, or by any other leaders at PSP, around children looked after's health, and health of children and young people in general, making sure that we have those conversations given the best possible opportunities. And finally, I'd just like to say it's great again to see the celebration of our children looked after, the young person who published their own book, and there was a book signing ceremony, and we also had the annual Bright Sparks Awards, so it's really, really important on the agenda that we celebrate the achievements of the children in our care. Thank you leader. Thanks very much, Ash. Councillor Mary, anything you wish to add? Yeah, very briefly, I won't repeat anything that Councillor Lister has said about the report. I would just really like to thank the committee though for their work during the year, and also officers for their ongoing work and support for the committee. Thanks, Sarah. Colleagues, any further comments or questions on this report? No? Thank you. Anything from you, Councillor Lancaster? Thanks, just briefly, yes of course, I'll start by thanking the committee and officers for their hard work on this, and for a largely positive report. Just one thing to, something that's always talked about here, which is the out-of-county placements coupled with overspend. We've seen even in the very next item, or the final item for today's agenda, it highlights a £5 million overspend in this Directorate. And of course that's not just a problem financially, but it's as a result of things like out-of-county placements, which we know are not as good as trying to retain, looked after children within county. There's been a big recruitment drive for foster carers over the past year, a couple of years. I just wondered what the result of that has been, if you're seeing an increase in foster carers and a corresponding result in reduced spends and better outcomes for children. Thanks, John. I wonder whether Ash can come in on that. I think you might be on mute, Ash. Oh, am I off mute now? Sorry. Thanks, leader, and thanks, Councillor Lancaster, for the comments and questions. I've always said, since the leader gave me the privilege of having this portfolio, that actually for me it's about having choice when the young person does have to become looked after. So whether that is kinship or special guardianship orders, foster care, or residential accommodation for a short period of time, the options need to be there. So we've put a lot of effort both into the accommodation strategy to expand the number of beds that we have as a local authority available to us closer to home. That's always been the message since my predecessor held the portfolio, and is actually having a young person move to Penarth if they're from Gravestone or Beattown is far better than having them somewhere like Rather, Rebeiner, Whitchurch, actually giving them within their communities as much as possible. But in terms of foster care, I'll have to get the exact numbers for you, but we are expanding the actual offer of accommodation that is available to us. So as you say, we can keep giving our children and young people the best opportunities possible, but we're shifting a lot of our focus onto ensuring that we actually prevent children from becoming looked after. And actually, we're seeing some real benefits there as well, where intensive work at the right place with the right person is preventing children from becoming looked after. So I would definitely find some information to share with colleagues and as soon as possible. Thanks, Ash. Casa Blum, anything from yourself, if you're there? Sorry, no, nothing on this one. Thanks, Rodney. Colleagues, I know we can tend to agree the recommendations. Thank you. Item two is the report on the provision for children and young people with additional learning needs. There is a scrutiny letter circulated. Can I invite Councillor Mary to introduce the report? Thank you, leader. This report is the final stage of determining proposals. We must publish summary of any objections and our response to those objections. So you will all be familiar with the proposals that are laid out in the report and of the need for further ALN places across the city. These proposals will give us an additional 100 formal places with new SRBs across the city, some of which will be replacing existing wellbeing classes. The schools include Baden-Powell, Fairwater Primary, Herbert-Thompson, Lakeside, Springwood, Plasmarra, Coiglass, Greenway and 7 Primary. Only one objection to the proposals was received from a Fairwater member relating to providing a SRB at Fairwater Primary. The objection now relates to establishing a secure fence line on the site and does not relate to the particular proposals in front of you today, which is to replace the existing wellbeing class at Fairwater Primary with a SRB. Establishing the secure fence line is related to a separate proposal to expand the court school and also the wider need for any school to have a secure line. On that basis, recommendation is for cabinet to approve the proposals. Thanks very much Sarah, seems straightforward to me. I'm really positive to see this coming forward. Any comments from cabinet colleagues? Nope. Thank you, yes I remember this from March and we had some questions around it. No, also of course the scrutiny committee has had some questions about it but they haven't been answered yet in time for this particular report so I hope that you'll be able to address some of the concerns raised by the scrutiny on that. One thing that I remember from the March report was that we had a separate report from Estin focusing on some of the potential downsides to this move, including the lack of suitable buildings available, a lack of funding. Indeed, you mentioned the cost of saving of about £10.8 million associated with this scheme. What's the overall projected cost saving going to be for this scheme and can you address some of the concerns raised by the scrutiny committee, including the Estin concern regarding the lack of suitable buildings? I don't believe that the specific concerns from scrutiny or those from Estin were about this particular report. If you go to section one of the report and that takes you through the list of the SRBs, you will actually see that the majority of these are actually coming forward within existing buildings or replacing existing wellbeing classes so there isn't the kind of risk or exposure that might have related to the wider strategy so I actually genuinely believe one of those proposals just seems a perfectly common sense approach to providing much needed additional places. Thanks, Sarah. Rodney, anything on this? Yeah, no, I definitely welcome these before we're moving forward. I suppose my question perhaps relates to where we've got to in terms of having sort of palliative provision across both region sectors and whether we still have further work to do to try to make sure there are sufficient places for any both region schools required? Yeah, I mean, just to point out that this is what I think it is actually the only completely new provision that is being suggested is the one at Plasmawa which is provided 20 place specialist resource space on the school site there within the existing buildings so I'm, you know, I think you can see there that we are starting to look at that issue, although I do think just as a quick reminder that obviously you know the needs of pupils within both Welsh and English medium may actually be very different depending on the form of ALN that the provision is meant to be addressing but we will certainly be looking to do that within the wider strategy. Thanks, Sarah. Okay colleagues, are we content to agree the recommendations? Thank you. Our final item today and just explain it's a slightly shortened agenda because of the sensitivities around the general election campaigning period but our final item today is the budget monitoring out-turn position for 2023-24. Councillor Weaver, over to you. Thank you, Leader. Another of our regular reports relating to budget monitoring, this obviously is a backward look at the final position we ended up in for the financial year 23-24 and there are two recommendations to report, one to note the report and any actions taken in respect to both Council's revenue and capital out-turn and also note that this will come to full Council as an appendix as part of a range of financial statements that we bring in the autumn. There's a series of appendices attached to this report and they go into more detail on both revenue and capital. Appendix 2 has some more detailed narrative in terms of the directorate positions. Appendix 3A and 3B cover the position on savings and all very valuable documents to consider. Obviously the overall position of course will be balanced at the end of the year. What you can see reading the report and the director of commentaries of course is that some directorates and some service areas did experience in-year overspends. The financial pressures in some areas are acute. These won't be new to anybody who's been coming to these meetings. These have been reported through the year at our regular budget monitoring positions but it does show the pressure that certain services, I think it's already been referenced in this meeting today around children's services in terms of the pressure, the financial pressure that comes from the placement needs there continues to present challenges for the authority. So overall a balanced position which is good but you can see those specific service area pressures. Obviously in the budget we set in March this year there were some realignments to service areas that are facing those but those underlying demand pressures will be continuing. I think it's just worth noting here again my massive thanks to all of the finance officers who work on these reports through the year. I think it's obviously crucial we take the right decisions when setting budgets and trying to steer the council through these challenging times but it's also really critical that there is clear, transparent and thorough reporting and we have a fantastic team of officers in the council who do really tireless work on ensuring that we do that and then publish them in the public domain. So happy if there's any questions or comments but the two recommendations to note the report and to note it will come to council. Happy to move today. Thanks very much Chris and a seconder. There's always a thanks to the entire staff of the council obviously for the work they do throughout the year but in particular to the finance team for their scrupulous monitoring of spending positions throughout the year and as ever getting to a position where we achieve a balanced budget at the end of the year which is no small feat so thank you to to those team and to Chris Lee in particular. Any comments from cabinet? No. John? Thanks just briefly. There's a line in the table in paragraph 25 of the initial report detailing the additional unsupported borrowing of 53 million pounds, 53.9 million pounds and in the following paragraph it says that was required to balance capital program commitments. Can you just outline what those kind of program commitments were and why they required unsupported borrowing? So unsupported borrowing forms part of the way in which we fund our capital program. You know that is the borrowing that the council does in order to fund the capital program. We publish it every budget each year and so you would expect to see that in every annual financial statement. Obviously sometimes we get external grants and which pay for the capital program sometimes we get revenues or receipts capital receipts and that pays for it and sometimes it's an investor save program and we do get a small grant from Welsh government towards capital funding it in no way would cover the cost of our capital program. We take into account when we set our annual revenue and capital budgets we take into account the cost of repaying that borrowing to deliver the capital program we set out overall. Chris Rodney? Thank you for presenting the report. I suppose my question is where we are in terms of the future because obviously we have maybe been fortunate in some regards that some of the overspends and some of them are quite chunky like the children's services have been in part balanced out by just capital finance costs but obviously as we go ahead with some of the big capital schemes like the arena that's now moving into the construction phase does that mean we are going to have less flex in future to have underspends and things like capital financing in order to offset such revenue overspends. The other question I've got relates to the saving that's been made from the line that says summary revenue account/council tax/discretionary rate relief. It just really gives a bit more information about how that funding has been saved because I was looking for detail about the rate relief I'm not sure if I've missed it but does this mean that we have been pulling back on offering discretionary rate relief to certain businesses because basically we've needed to use that budget to offset other overspends. Thanks council member. So on the first point yeah I mean obviously there are as you point out there have been some areas of overspend, there have been some areas of underspend. It's true potentially if we proceed with some of the capital programming you might get less of that in future years. It's why when we set the budget in March it's critical we think of any realignments or additional funding that goes into certain service areas and there was substantial money went into children's services to try and address that. It's also why it's absolutely critical through the year that each directorate monitors overseas and seeks to control its revenue budget as far as is possible. It's part of the valuable role that these regular monitoring reports play in terms of having oversight of that. I don't know whether I can turn to Chris on the second points around that savings line. Yeah thanks council member. Generally in terms of the summary revenue account perhaps just point members to appendix one which gives a little bit more detail in there particularly around the get out as you referenced from the discretionary rate relief. It's certainly not an area that we use to balance or target savings from. It's simply the call on that budget each year. So I think there was an allocation of 400,000 and the projected out turn was 273,000 against that. It also separates out the council tax collection as well as the summary revenue account so again we can provide further details if required as part of a response back to council member. Thanks Chris. Okay thank you for those questions. Colleagues are we content to agree the recommendations? Thank you all very much. That concludes the business of the day. Have a good afternoon. [End of Audio] [End of Audio] [End of Audio] [End of Audio] .