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The minutes are published. No summary has been written yet.
1.1 The Chair welcomed the Executive Member, Councillors and Officers to the meeting. Apologies were received from Councillors Len Constance, Veronica Crick, Fay Jones, Janet Jones and Peter Jones.
2.1 No interests were declared.
3.1 The minutes of the meeting held on 10 June 2021 were confirmed as an accurate record.
4.1 The minutes of the meeting held on 5 October 2021 were confirmed as an accurate record. However, it was highlighted that the attendance had not been included. Democratic Services to action.
5.1 The action sheet was noted.
6.1 The Chair introduced the item and after, the EM went through the purpose of the Scrutiny activity and introduced the report. The ACER briefly outlined the report pulling out key highlights for Members’ attention and the following, Officers responded to Members’ questions as follows:- • ACER – Service areas had been asked to consider how they could reduce expenditure. There were more sophisticated ways of reducing expenditure than by taking a set amount off each area and these were achieved when going through the budget process. The figures contained within the appendices were drafts and so no decisions had been made. Skills and employment was previously funded from the European Social Fund (ESF) grant and had to be taken into consideration and managed in a different way as the funding was no longer available. • CONS – Officers were pleased with the announcement the local authority (LA) had been successful with their bid from the Community Renewal Fund. This was a precursor to the Shared Renewal Fund under the anti-poverty and skills grants. The bids were community ones where they were able to deliver on programmes, which would put them in good stead for the Shared Prosperity Fund, which would replace the ESF. The funding was time-specific with a deadline of June 2022. • COE – There was a specific reserve fund looking to see how the LA supported schools in special measures, which included having additional leadership. Those schools were all in different phases of recovery, so it was currently not possible to say when Executive Headteacher posts would cease. • COE – Savings in Education and support services had been achieved through vacancy savings; £40k in not replacing posts. The change management budget was a central budget that the LA held for schools. This hadn’t been utilised and so it was safe to use towards savings measures. • HoFS – The estimates for Service Strategy and Regulation in Social Care and Housing on page 47 of the agenda was not a mistake. This was where the initial increase for providers was kept. There had been no analysis on where to assign it so it was being held in that line, and would be moved into other lines when they were able to. It included inflation figures and was an income line which was subject to specific grant that the LA received from Welsh Government (WG). The line in the majority included the Social Care workforce grant training fund. The 2022/23 column was assumed at the same level as the previous years but there was an offset there. The HoFS would provide Councillor Bevan with an analysis that explained the process further. • COE – Each budget heading consisted of a lot of detail, which would be provided to Members. The key point was that there were two major components – decommitting the change management budget as it hadn’t all been used and to use that to offset the deficit, and also to make savings in the budget in not filling posts quickly, for example. There were no cuts to services in Play and they were not anticipating any cuts to education service delivery. • LFOE – The £67k increase in Access and Engagement was around inflation and pay pressures in Education. • COE – All posts in Education were recruited to. They had everything they needed regarding leadership. There had been the introduction of the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) Act and officers were working through it, but it was presented as a risk. There could be pressures on education psychology as there was a national shortage of those in the profession, but they had all the support they needed. ACER – When the LA had legislative pressures, it had a good track record amongst other LA’s of working through them and addressing the need; where and when. • COE – There had been a £750k uplift previously made to schools, which made a great difference. They were working closely on how schools took responsibility of delivering funding to the children. There was a very clear and supportive structure between the LA and schools. Saving measures in the area could relate to the Crownbridge School new build project. The proposal was co-funded by WG and was moving on, so when it arrived they were anticipating potential savings going forward. This was an area of demand around children with complex needs; there was a steady increase across the UK and so they needed the additional capacity, rather than have to send children out of county, away from their families. The new build had already been agreed and was in the design stage. • COSC – There were ongoing discussions with Bron Afon around the lease of Ty Glas y Dorlan. The furnishings were going in and so it would be up and running soon. A Members’ Seminar was planned there towards the end of November. • COSC – Budgets within Adult Services were subject to contract inflation. They were in the early stages of completing the figures with providers who had also been faced with additional costs. Child Services budgets were dictated by demand; they had 13 children in residential and were struggling to commission foster carers etc. and there was also contract inflation as well. They were pressed to make more payments to Domiciliary Care where providers were wanting to raise costs in order to pass it on to their workforce. They were speaking to WG around people being paid less for home care. There were huge pressures going forward in employing people in domiciliary care. The financial position for the year was positive as funds were not being spent in some areas, there could be gaps in others where costs could go up. • COSC – Locally, the LA was meeting providers and their staff to encourage them to have their Covid-19 vaccinations. In the main, the take up was good but some were reluctant. They were working with the Health Board to reassure people. They were now moving onto the boosters. Residential staff were having them and were encouraging others to have them too. • COSC – The details around the small uplift in the Community Regeneration budget would be sent to Members after the meeting. • COSC – There hadn’t been a significant increase in child referrals, which was surprising. The worry was more around children who hadn’t been in education. Children often didn’t make disclosures around what had gone on until they had built up trust and so they could see more referrals coming through. This had been raised at the Safeguarding Board to see if anyone had seen an increase but they had not, or it hadn’t manifested yet. Social Workers were going out and taking an eyes-on approach. • COSC – In relation to Domiciliary Care and Commissioning Services, people had left the workforce because they were exhausted and found jobs in other sectors. They had a number of strategies in place with Coleg Gwent and others in order to try and tackle the issue. They were trying to recruit into the jobs but the workforce just wasn’t there. Other LAs were in the same position where people were walking away from their jobs. It wasn’t a sector that had good press during Covid. If they were able to recruit they could get people out of hospital quicker. They were having conversations with the families involved, all of whom understood the situation, but that would only get them so far. There were 37 people waiting to be discharged from hospital but at least whilst they were there, they were safe. The LA had help from the Health Board, so were very much working in partnership to tackle the issue. • COSC – It was never the case to enter into a bidding process and to go for the cheapest option when looking at providers. They brokered packages based on the number of hours, not costs. The biggest problem was that it had been outsourced previously based on best value and it had thrown up problems. They had contracts with providers, but also a central brokerage team who looked at everything. • COSC – They had always tried to find budget mitigations to close the gap but it had been a struggle. They were still working through the budget in order to identify savings. • CONS – The uplift of £345k in Catering and Cleaning was not because of Covid; the majority of the increase was pay. The cost of food was also increasing where they had to contend with procurement and contracts with food suppliers. The service had been going on without a strategic management post and so they were looking to put it back in. • LFON – There was a budget of £40k for salt and contingency plans. The regional salt barn was set up when supplies were sparse. WG funded salt being brought in. 200 tonnes was stored and replenished annually. The cost of salt was cheaper in the summer. If there was a shortfall in supply the budget would need to be topped up from elsewhere. • CONS – The Neighbourhood Services budget included a £150k increase for tarmac inflation. There had been no notification in the increase in highways grant allocation from WG as this was a national announcement. They were not aware that anything would filter through WG. • CONS – In terms of the fleet and the cost of parts, they had seen inflation rises. They were doing what they could by working together against it. It was a significant pressure and impacted upon the Capital Programme with suppliers. Supply was forcing up costs. Street lamp replacement parts were stuck in China so costs had increased. The global supply chain was impacting on service and budget. • CONS – Scrutiny had looked at the strategies around planning for global climate change. Normal refuse vehicles cost in the region of £170k to buy; electric was around £420k. The LA had received a 50% grant to purchase them from WG. They would cost less to fuel and so would eventually bring the budget back into line, but would become cheaper to purchase over time. Lighting and heating changes had saved the LA money. WG were looking at a long term funding strategy like the 21st Century Schools Programme to tackle climate change but it needed to be worked through as it affected all public sector. • LFON – Neighbourhood Services held a reserve of about a million pounds. ACER – There wasn’t a limit on a safe working reserve. He had to give an opinion on the accuracy of the reserve, looking at risks etc. It usually hovered around four million, LA-wide. • ACER – Reserves were a one-off and were there to manage change and to use in case it was needed. Reserves would be very important going forward with the future being so uncertain and should never be used to put off decisions. They had to find £1.5 million in savings as it would eventually be a reoccurring cost. Constantly using reserves would erode it quickly and so to keep a healthy reserve would always be the advice. Financial sustainability assessments took place in Wales where reserves were compared to budgets and mitigations. The reserve at Torfaen was seen as positive. High reserves were not necessarily perceived as a positive. • ACER – Reserves had to be managed in accordance with treasury management guidelines, so it was not possible to use it for investment. • LFOR – There was a nil working budget for Substance Misuse as it was now a regional issue that Newport City Council managed. • HoFS – The biggest increase in budget was in PSSU core due to ICT security enhancements through the SRS. They had entered into the enhancements on a collaborative basis with other SRS partners. The enhancements provided additional layers of ICT security in order to mitigate cyber-attacks. There were no contributions from WG to support the additional security, it was a policy decision by Gwent-wide officers to prevent cyber-attacks. Other increases in the PSSU core were due to inflation, but a breakdown would be sent out to Members. • LFOR – The variance in Human Resources was mostly due to staff and was pay and training related. It was a large area and so the impact was great. • LFOR – Savings had been made through a T22 post and other staff sat in those lines. The post had not been budgeted for going forward but there were other new posts under the Resources line. • ACER – They carried out some work with external support on T22 procurement savings but they weren’t there and so were not offered into this year’s budget. 6.2 There were no further questions and so the EM and Officers left the meeting. The B&DSSM and SBSO stayed for the recommendations. 6.3 Recommendations On completion of their scrutiny activity, the Committee concluded by offering the following recommendations and comments for consideration:- Recommendation 1 Members of the committee felt that although current estimates point to an approximate £1.5million budget shortfall, it is important that the budget makes suitable provision for tackling; - Schools causing concern, - Staffing issues in domiciliary care, and - Any increase in demand in children’s services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendation 2 Members felt that if the situation did improve significantly (see 3rd comment), then it may be possible to look at minimising the increase to council tax. During the course of their discussions Members also agreed to make the following comments and requests for further information:- • In future years Members requested that supporting appendices contained a greater level of detail. The information is required to assist members to understand how individual services are resourced and what they are delivering, in order to better equip members to undertake their scrutiny role. • Members requested more detailed information regarding the shortfall in achieving the £500,000 savings in the T22 procurement project, in particular requesting what if any savings had been found. • Members agreed it was too early in the process to be thinking about using reserve funding to balance the budget. Members felt with that there were options to explore first and with uncertainties regarding the nature of the final settlement the existing gap may well close further. 6.4 The meeting ended at 4.40pm.
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