Report of the Strategic Director for Children’s and Education Services attached

The report of the Strategic Director for Children’s and Education Services explained how the budget proposals for the Directorate had been developed.

The gross 2023/24 budget for the Directorate was £607.293m, which included the Dedicated Schools Grant  delegated to maintained schools.The net budget is £143.801m.  As part of the 2023/24 budget setting proposals, a total of £11.8m had been proposed for 2023/24 to 2025/26 and there had been confidence that managing demand savings were achievable with most of the savings achieved through early intervention and managing demand.

The Directorate’s budget was currently forecast to be overspent by £7.757m. 

The underlying reason for this was attributed to significantly increased costs of care placements for Looked After Children (LAC), a shortfall in the Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children grant for the numbers now being accommodated and an overspend on Home to School Transport, which was attributed to an increase in requests and entitlement.

Evidence continued to show there had been significant cost avoidance through the actions taken to support children and young people effectively at an earlier stage and avoid LAC status.  However, those benefits had been outstripped by the rising costs of.  Additional funding was included in the budget proposals to cover these costs, but the focus would remain on continuing to manage demand effectively and intervening early. 

On 24 January 2024 additional funding was announced in a written statement to Parliament in advance of the final settlement. The announcement included a further £500m for social care, £15m increase in the Rural Services Delivery Grant (RSDG), and that the funding guarantee would be increased from 3% to 4% (estimate £60m extra). If the funding is allocated in line with the existing Social Care Grant formula, Manchester would receive around £5.5m.  The proposed budget had seen a significant additional investment of £12.6m (an increase of £4m since the November 2023 proposals), into Children’s Social Care, with budget plans set prior to the announcement.  Recommendations on how to achieve maximum value from the new funding are being developed and will be finalised once the Final Finance Settlement has been published and final amounts are known.

It was noted that the report had also been considered at a recent meeting of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee where the committee had endorsed the budget proposals (Minute CYP/24/09)

Decision

The Executive approve the Directorate budget proposals as set out in the report.