Agenda item

(To receive a report from Tony Warnock, Operations and Financial Advice Manager, which seeks the maintained primary school representatives' approval to the Local Authority's (LA) proposals for the de-delegation of the budgets in 2015/16 and 2016/17)

Consideration was given to a report from the Operations and Financial Advice Manager, which sought the maintained primary school representatives' approval to the Local Authority's proposal for the de-delegation of the budgets in 2015/16 and 2016/17.

The report provided information as to the background to the proposal; the current financial position; and the proposals the LA intended to implement, these were shown in paragraphs 1 to 5 on pages 44 and 45 of the report presented.  

It was reported that the impact of the proposal was to reduce the total budget requirement for all of the services mentioned in the report from £1.439m in 2014/15 to £1.115m p.a. in 2015/16 and 2016/17.  That would then create a budget requirement for the two years of £2.230m.  After the projected underspending (£1.080m) is deducted, the sum to be de-delegated would be £0.575m for each of the two years.  This amount was a significant reduction in the proposed charges to the current year.

Appendix 1 to the report provided details of the current service provision.

RESOLVED

That the maintained primary schools representatives supported the proposals for the de-delegation of the budgets for the period 2015/16 and 2016/17 as set out in the report and detailed below:-

1. The services for which funds are de-delegated are primarily staffing based and so for planning purposes, it would be helpful to have more advanced notice of the maintained schools' plans for future de-delegation.  Maintained school representatives on the Schools Forum are therefore asked not only to support de-delegation, but to do so for two years commencing 1^st April 2015.  The LA proposes that a similar report to this one is produced each year, not only to report on progress and to seek feedback, but also to seek agreement to extend the existing agreement by a further year.  This would mean that providing mainstream school representatives are content with the services being provided, the relevant services would always be able to plan with the certainty of two years' further funding.

2. As indicated earlier in this report, it is possible that the budgets de-delegated each year may underspend and it is important that this is earmarked for the benefit of the schools that contribute to those.  Unfortunately, recent government regulations prevent certain in-year payments being made to schools by the LA.  Furthermore, it could become very confusing for schools, and complicated to administer, if partial refunds are issued to schools on the 1^st April each year.  The LA therefore proposes to adjust the sum that it proposes to de-delegate each year, to take account of the previous underspendings.  This way, maintained schools will benefit from any underspendings on their de-delegated budgets by paying reduced amounts in the following financial year.  A consequence of this approach, however, will be that the per pupil amounts de-delegated for each service will vary from year to year, but the sums involved should be relatively modest.

3. In light of the 2013/14 actual and 2014/15 projected underspend on the Termination of Employment budget, it is proposed to reduce the budget requirement from £0.467m to £0.250m p.a. for the next two years.  This will be kept under review.

4. It is proposed that the budget requirement for Interim Headteachers is reduced from £0.401m to £0.291m p.a.

5. It is proposed that the funding level for Inclusion and Attendance (Ethnic Minority and Traveller Education Team (EMTET)) is set at £0.188m.  A modest increase in budget (c.£0.005m) would therefore be needed to offset the modest reduction in funding that would have arisen from recent academy conversions.