Decision

To approve an additional £100,000 bringing the total allocation to £300,000 from the Local Authority’s Higher Needs Provision Capital Allocation (HNPCA) to facilitate the relocation of the Family Time Service to Fairwinds, Occombe, Paignton.

Reasons for the decision

The Family Time Service provides a range of services in response to the assessed needs of Children and Families including family assessments and supervised contacts as part of the Council’s statutory Corporate Parenting role.

It was displaced from its original home at The Ark in Brixham in July 2025 to enable the expansion of Mayfield Schools Chestnut Provision.  Whilst it is currently being delivered from temporary settings this is not financially viable in the long term and impacts on service delivery and staffing through the spreading of resources across sites.

There is currently an available budget of £2.1m in the HNPCA, and it is already included within the Children’s Capital Programme with Director of Children’s Services having delegated powers to approve expenditure in line with the Department for Education (DfE) criteria and with local SEND strategies.

Alternative options considered

Fairwinds is a Council Asset that will become vacant in August 2026.  After a site appraisal of available Council sites including ZigZags, the Monastery, Great Parks and the Polsham centre; it has concluded that the most viable and suitable location is Fairwinds and the proposal is to relocate the Service to this asset and for it to become their permanent base.