Issue - meetings

This report provides Schools Forum with an update on the forecast financial position for 2022/23. The reported position is against the budget set in consultation with Schools Forum and submitted to the Department for Education (DfE) on the Section 251 budget return.

Olufunke Adediran, Head of Finance at Brent Council, introduced the report that set out an update on the forecast financial position for 2022/23. The position was reported against the budget set in consultation with the Schools Forum and submitted to the Department for Education on the Section 251 budget return.

The Forum noted the following key points as part of the update provided:

·             The forecast Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficit was estimated at £2.1m to the year end 2022/23. The illustrated a £0.1m reduction compared to the position reported to Schools Forum in November 2022.

·             Table 1 in Section 4 of the report summarised the position of each of the DSG Blocks. The Schools Block reflected a pressure of £0.5m due to pressures against the growth funds that provided funding to schools when there were increased pupil numbers and an increased demand from schools to fund redundancy costs as a result of re-structures necessary due to falling rolls.

·             The High Needs Block carried a forecast overspend of £2.8m due to the continued rise in demand for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP’s) with an increasing complexity of need and rising costs of out of borough placements, the Forum noted this reflected a national trend as detailed in Table 2, section 6.3 of the report.

·             A deficit management plan was in place to recover the deficit in the long term, this would also be supported by the Delivering Better Value (DBV) in SEND programme, although the funding received via the DBV programme would not be used to directly add funds to mitigate the deficit, it was noted that efficiencies identified during the programme coupled with the longer term recovery actions and anticipated funding increases would aid a reduction in the deficit. The Forum would receive an update on the DBV programme at a future meeting.

·             The Early Years Block was forecast to underspend by £1.0m, this was mainly due to an in year adjustment from the DfE to the EY Block funding in July 2022 which saw an increase of £1.2m due to an increase in take up hours seen in the January 2022 census. The Forum noted that the DfE was expected to make a further adjustment to the 2022/23 funding allocation based on the January 2023 census data, therefore it was proposed that this forecast underspend would be retained in reserves to mitigate the impact of any clawback due from the DfE following confirmation of the final funding position in July 2023.

·             The Central Block forecasted an underspend of £0.2m due to in year vacancies.

·             The Forum’s attention was drawn to Section 9.1 of the report that responded to Action Point 82 and confirmed that Brent was funded at an inner London scale to provide inner London salaries to teaching staff in Brent using an area cost adjustment in the National Funding Formula (NFF).

·             The Forum’s attention was drawn to Section 9.2 of the report that responded to Action Point 83 to advise the Forum of the criteria that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6