Report of the Chief Executive and the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer

This report provides an update on the Council’s overall financial position and sets out the next steps in the budget process, including scrutiny of the draft Budget proposals and Budget report by this Committee. Each Scrutiny Committee will receive a budget report aligned to its remit, showing the main changes proposed to delivery and funding. The services to be considered by each scrutiny committee are shown at table four. The report also outlines the officer proposals for how the Council could deliver a balanced budget for 2020/21, the details of which will be discussed at the relevant scrutiny committees.

The Committee considered a report of the Chief Executive and the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer, which provided an update on the Council’s overall financial position and set out the next steps in the budget process. In doing so, the report outlined officer proposals for how the Council could deliver a balanced budget for 2020/21.

In conjunction with the above, the Committee also received and considered the draft  Council Business Plan for 2020/21 and the Children and Education Services Budget 2020/21.

Officers highlighted that the 2020/21 budget would be a one year roll over budget. It would reflect the fact the Council had declared a climate emergency and would also continue to reflect the priorities identified in the previous three-year budget strategy.

Taken together, the reports illustrated how the directorate would work to deliver the Our Corporate Plan and progress towards the vision set out in the Our Manchester Strategy.

The Executive Member for Children and Schools informed Members of the context of the budget proposals, reporting that children’s services were under pressure across the country with the Local Government Association (LGA) reporting a 140% increase in demand nationally, while funding had reduced.  He reported that the child population in Manchester had increased significantly, creating increased budget pressures, but that the Council had made investing in children’s services a priority.  He drew Members’ attention to some of the key proposals within the report.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were: -

• The reliance on the social care reserve to fund services and was the Council lobbying the government for more funding;
• The volatility of the budget;
• The commissioning strategy for placements;
• Recruitment and retention of Social Workers;
• Whether there was a tipping point at which so many maintained schools had converted to academies that it was no longer financial viable for the Council to support the remaining maintained schools;
• The reduction in the number of adoptions in 2018/19; and
• Plans to remove the Council’s funding to the Manchester Foundation Trust (MFT) for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and to use the funding to support the development of provision for children with high and complex needs, recommending that the Committee should consider these issues at a future meeting.

The Head of Finance advised Members that the social care reserve was being used over a three year period.  She reported that this spending was not sustainable and that, while efficiencies were expected to be made, they would not be sufficient to fund services once the reserves had been used.  She reported that this approach was being taken with the expectation that the national government would produce a longer-term budget strategy to address the pressures councils across the country were facing in funding children’s services.  She informed Members that the Council was lobbying the government in relation to the Fair Funding Formula.  The Chair advised Members to continue to lobby the government for additional funding.

The Strategic Director of Children and Education Services advised Members that the level of need for children’s services was volatile and there were some aspects which could not be predicted, such as the number of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children arriving in the city; however, he reported that officers had assessed as far as possible the expected level of demand, for example, looking at known factors such as population growth and making assumptions based on previous data and information from comparable councils.  He informed the Committee that the service was as confident as it could be about the expected level of demand and the impact of the service’s strategies.  He advised Members that the Sufficiency Strategy was central to the service’s spending and he suggested that the Committee consider a report on this at a future meeting, to which the Chair agreed.

The Strategic Director of Children and Education Services drew Members’ attention to the information in the report on work to improve the recruitment and retention of Social Workers.  He advised the Committee that Social Workers tended to make decisions about whether to continue with their career in Social Work once they had been in the role for two years so the Council was looking into putting in place some measures to encourage the staff to stay in the role and continue to develop.  He reported that another priority was to retain the service’s experienced Senior Social Workers and support their development and further progression into management roles.  He advised Members that, while some turnover of staff was healthy, retaining permanent staff was important to enable relationship-building and to support the stability of the practice model.

The Director of Education informed Members that a lot of the funding in the central block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) funded the Council’s duties relating to all schools, including academies, for example funding the Admissions Service, although the Council did receive some funding for duties specifically relating to maintained schools.  She informed Members that only 35% of Manchester schools were academies and there were not currently many maintained schools converting to academies.  Therefore, she advised Members that officers were not currently concerned about reaching a tipping point where it would be difficult to support a small number of remaining maintained schools, although there was a possibility that the new government could introduce legislation which would change this. 

The Strategic Director of Children and Education Services advised the Committee that there had been a reduction in the number of adoptions nationally due to a number of factors and outlined how the Council was working as part of the regional adoption agency Adoption Counts to place children with adoptive parents; however, he advised that the Council’s Permanence Strategy was not only about adoption but about giving children emotional, physical, legal and psychological permanence through a range of methods, highlighting that the number of children achieving permanence through a Special Guardianship Order had increased significantly.

Decisions

1.            To support the strategy set out in the reports and to ask the Executive and the Council to continue to lobby the government for extra resources for schools and children’s services.

2.            To note that the Committee will receive further information at its February meeting.

3.            To consider the impact of the Council removing its funding for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) at a future meeting.

4.            To receive a report on the Sufficiency Strategy.

5.            To consider the provision of placements for children with high and complex needs in a future report.

6.            To continue to monitor work to achieve permanence for children, including through the Corporate Parenting Panel.