Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to provide information and explain the rationale behind the Council savings proposal to contribute Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) funding towards supporting central services for schools.

Brian Grady reminded members that the Local Authority had launched a consultation on the 2019/20 and 2020/21 budgets. It had been centred on the need to find savings from the revenue budget of £20 million across the two years. In addition, it had been forecasted that £40 million of savings would be needed to balance the budget by 2022/23. Mr Grady highlighted that the proposals affected the Children and Young People Department as well as the contribution from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG). He noted that if the Council did not achieve the savings outlined in the ‘Recommended’ and the ‘Difficult’ budget proposals, it might be necessary to consider measures included in the ‘Most Difficult’ category.

Mr Grady directed the Forum’s attention to proposal CYP001 (Appendix A to the Draft Budget Proposals 2019/20 and 2020/21 report presented to Cabinet on 15 October 2018) which suggested using £250,000 from the DSG to fund statutory education functions. This would provide services with a greater degree of protection from future savings as they would no longer be funded by the Council’s General Fund. If this recommendation was adopted, granting the funding would require annual approval by the Schools Forum.

A Head Teacher commented that they were not content with allowing funds allocated from the DSG to support services to be ring-fenced and accessed by third party organisations such as the Brent National Health Service (NHS) Clinical Commissioning Group and the health economy. Mr Grady said that the intention of this part of the report had been to demonstrate that the resources of the Local Authority had been used to secure funding from stakeholders to deliver services which provided wider support for children and families in Brent and confirmed that the proposal would not result in access to DSG resources by other parties.. A Primary Governor pointed out that local authorities in London had experienced a reduction of nearly 70% to their core funding from Government in the last decade. They spoke of alternative approaches, adopted by some other local authorities, which protected frontline services and reduced back officer support. However, this could lead to a situation where it might not be possible to provide sufficient support to practitioners. Therefore, it would be advisable to support the proposal outlined in the report in order to prevent the need to implement measures outlined in the ‘Very Difficult’ and ‘Most Difficult’ budget proposals. 

Members queried the back office reductions that had been made by the Local Authority and Mr Grady explained that the Children and Young People Department had been restructured four years ago to provide a child-focused and responsive service. The new structure relied on two Operational Directors (some local authorities had three) which allowed for joint integration of resources. Nevertheless, if the ‘Recommended’ and ‘Difficult’ budget savings were not achieved, there would be a need to consider measures in the ‘Most Difficult’ category and services for children and families could be effected.

A Primary Head Teacher referred to paragraph 7.5 of the report (page 18 of the Agenda pack) and said that the changes that had been introduced as a result of the restructure had had a positive impact on the achievement of schools. They acknowledged the role of the Brent Schools Partnership which had helped to drive the changes and had provided a strategic steer to the relationship between schools and the Local Authority.

A Secondary Academy Head referred to the discrepancy in the amount of funding other local authorities had allocated to their Central Services (Appendix 1 on page 19 of the Agenda pack) and said that it would be interesting to know how the funds were used, including the rationale behind allocations and spending in relation to education welfare service; asset management; and statutory and regulatory services. Mr Grady noted that it was important to ensure that the measures would be sustainable in the future and said that, in his view, the offer to schools in Brent had been effective and compared favourably to the level of support other local authorities were able to provide. A Head Teacher enquired why Appendix 1 showed that the DSG did not make a contribution to central costs in Camden and Hounslow. In response, Andrew Ward confirmed this was currently the case for these two authorities but that this could change and he was not familiar with their proposals for the next financial year.

The request to use £250,000 of Schools Block DSG funding to support central services in 2019/20 (as set out in paragraph 2.1 of the report (page 15 of the Agenda pack)) was then put to the vote by a show of hands and declared CARRIED.

RESOLVED that:

(i)            The contents of the Dedicated Schools Grant Support for Central Education Services 2019/20 report, be noted;

(ii)          The request to use £250,000 of Schools Block DSG funding to support central services in 2019/20 be approved; and

(iii)             Additional information on the way other local authorities used their DSG central support budgets, including the rationale behind allocations and spending in relation to categories outlined in Appendix 1, be provided to the Schools Forum.