Agenda item

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children & Education) seeks to update the Forum on issues related to the Early Years Block for 2022-23 and the decisions that need to be made as part of the budget setting process for 2022-23.

Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on issues related to the Early Years block for 2022-23 and the decisions that would need to be made as part of the budget setting process and highlighted the following:

·         In his 2021 Spending Review, the Chancellor announced a number of national increases to increase early years entitlements. For 2022-23 this would be £160m and this included uplifts to the 2, 3 and 4 year old rates as well as uplifts to the disability access fund and pupil premium.  The provisional early years block settlement for Wiltshire for 2022-23 was £28.521m;

·         The allocations for the free entitlement for 3 and 4 year olds and 2 year olds are based on the January 2021 census and would be updated during the 2022-23 year for the January 2022 census;

·         The operational guidance for early years entitlements: local authority funding of providers 2022-23 was published in December 2021 and this contained a number of key points for the local authority to include when they were funding their providers;

·         The Early Years Reference Group met on 5 January 2022 and considered a number of funding options attached as Appendix 1.  The consensus of the group was to support the local authority recommendation of option 3, to passport in full the 2-year-old disadvantaged rate of £5.69 per entitled hour an increase of 21p on the previous year and to set the 3 and 4 year old rate at £4.42 per entitled hour, an increase of 17p per hour on the previous year whilst providing a minimum of £50,000 contingency to absorb any increases in children throughout the 2022-23 financial year;

·         The Disability Access Fund is payable as a lump sum once a year per eligible child. If a child is splitting their entitlement between two or more providers, then parents should be asked to nominate the main setting. If a child receiving DAF moves from one setting to another within a financial year the new setting is not eligible to receive DAF for this child within the same financial year; and

·         Appendix 2 to the report were the calculations of compliance with a worked example showing 98.3% of pass through.  All demonstrated options would also have been compliant.

An Early Years representative expressed his thanks for the work of the Finance Team and for the agreement of option 3 of the funding of the rates.  He also asked that the Council make representatives to the DfE to ask them to consider paying the business rates of nurseries/early year settings on a de-delegated basis as they will now be doing for maintained nurseries in schools for consistency.  Marie Taylor agreed to consider the implications of this and raise with colleagues.

Resolved: That Schools Forum

1.  Note the update on the early years block and proposals in relation to the early years single funding formula and percentage pass through to providers:

     Local Authority preferred proposal:

i)             to increase the current rate of 2-year-old funding to £5.69 and 3 & 4-year-old funding to £4.42 per hour.

ii)            Pay inflation be added at 2% to the central early year’s teams

2.  Note that all other funding factors remain at current 2021-22 levels or, funded levels.

3.  Agree the early years block is to fully fund the Early Years Inclusion Fund at the current level and the high needs block to allocate £0.180m to increase support available in line with the SEN strategy around prevention.

The Forum agreed to suspend the meeting at 3.02pm for a comfort break.  The meeting reconvened at 3.07pm.