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Agenda item

Dedicated Schools Budget - Budget Monitoring 2020/21

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) seeks to present monitoring information against the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) for the financial year 2020/21 as at 31 August 2020.

Minutes:

Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) referred to the budget monitoring report as at 31 August 2020 that was circulated with the Agenda.  Marie highlighted the following:

 

·       An overspend of £8.618 million was currently projected against the overall DSG budget;

 

·       Covid had created uncertainty around early years and settings were expected to step up and for the first part of the summer terms, to open up only for children of key workers, those that were vulnerable (Social Worker involvement) and those that had an EHCP.  Locally it was agreed that open settings would be paid at 100% with additional incentive payments of £100 per child per week to fund the additional costs of PPE and cleaning.  Closed settings were paid at 80%. A hardship fund was set up for closed settings who evidenced financial hardship due to Covid – luckily the take up for that wasn’t huge;

 

·       From 1 June it was expected that all settings would be open, and payments continued at 100% for open and 80% for closed settings.  Broadly the same number of children are currently in setting as were in Autumn 2019, however dual placements were not currently recommended, and some settings have above average reduced hours and some increased hours.  Obviously, the children in settings require funding at the usual rate in order for them to staff appropriately.  For some providers seeing a temporary dip, support payments were being made at current hourly rates;

 

·       The LA has a duty of sufficiency for the early years sector and was working closely with providers to provide the support that they were able to within the terms and conditions of the grant funding;

 

·       Due to the uncertainty no variance was forecast on the budgets for free entitlement for 15- and 30-hours childcare, however the modelling included a contingency sum.  Officers did not want to fully allocate the budget to have it taken away as the variance next year;

 

·       The high needs budgets are projected to overspend by £11.003 million – the biggest areas of overspend are the Independent Special School packages, NPA’s and top ups;

 

·       Whilst the number of EHCP’s had increased, there had been a slight dip because of Covid with the increase being 11% compared to 12% last year.  4,289 EHCP’s are forecast by the end of the financial year;

 

·       The DSG reserve brought forward of £11.350 million is increased by the positive early years block adjustment of £0.539 million.  The forecast overspend would take the reserve into a deficit position of £19.429.  This is a major financial risk which is highlighted on the LA’s risk register;

 

·       The impact of Covid on the LA’s finances is significant and a significant overspend on the Council’s general position is anticipated at the end of the financial year; and

 

·       From 2018/19 the DfE have tightened the rules around deficits and require a report from the LA to explain their plans for bringing the DSG account back into balance.  With effect from 2020/21 the DfE during expanded the requirements around deficits and these would be outlined later in the meeting, but there was more of an acceptance that there would need to be a longer-term plan for recovery.

 

An early year’s representative reported that he had written to Emily Arch (Senior Policy Advisor – DfE) expressing concern at the future years sustainability of the early years sector across the county, copying in Wiltshire MP’s but had not had a response yet.

 

The Chair asked if there were any known local Schools with increased financial pressures because of Covid.  Grant Davis responded that a number of schools had reduced some costs as they had not had to incur supply teaching costs, overtime etc, whilst others did have additional costs relating to PPE and enhanced cleaning.  Since the September return to school some had expressed concern about the costs of PPE and sanitisers etc with there being no offsetting saving and those who have staff who are pregnant who are not able to be teaching in classes and there was no additional funding for those circumstances.  Grant highlighted that the F40 group were continuing to work to address funding pressures.

 

Helean Hughes (Director – Education & Skills) reported that from the weekly updates they receive from the DfE they are keen to hear about Schools feeling pressures.  It was suggested that Schools Forum members should consider any schools that they were aware of facing pressures and ask for clear details/case studies of real events that have impacted on a school to submit to the DfE, e.g. deep cleaning costs incurred in the event of Covid cases and additional staffing needs etc.  It was agreed that Grant Davis would send a communication via Rightchoice to ask Schools to share their experiences of additional costs.

 

Resolved:

 

That Schools Forum note the budget monitoring position at the end of August 2020 alongside the reports later on the agenda focussing on the high needs block recovery working group, the changes in DfE recovery planning requirements around the DSG deficit and the School Revenue Funding 2021/22.

Supporting documents: