The Committee received two presentations that provided a focus on financial overspends in Children's & Culture and Health, Adults & Community Directorates. 

The main points of the discussion on the Overspends in Children's & Culture may be summarised as follows.

Children and Culture

The Committee:

• Noted that whilst there had been a loss of income from Service Level Agreements (SLA) of £0.7m primarily because of the pandemic there had also been a reduction in spend due a fall in demand for services e.g. Contract Services.
• Noted whilst with increasing delegation and diversion of funding directly to schools there has been a reduction in income for the Councils Traded Services.  However, with the pandemic there has also been significant reduction in income as (i) schools were not operating at the same level; (ii) schools purchase their SLA’s for financial years and the lockdown of schools happened in mid-March and some schools did not take out SLA’s at all; and (iii) Schools are also now looking at increased costs for cleaning and cover.
• Commented that it wished to see a holistic approach to budget pressures by assessing expenses for all organisational activities in a structured and pragmatic way e.g. (i) some schools have delivered food to households rather than provide food vouchers which has meant that they still have had a lot of contact with children and young people; (ii) using equality impact assessment to get an insight into the factors influencing the impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities and strategies for addressing inequalities; (iii) the impact of any delays in restructuring and associated pressures on budgets.
• Noted that the Children's and Culture Directorate management team have today considered (i) how manageable restructures/savings would be; (ii) the impact of such restructures/savings on residents; children and families; (iii) how they can ensure that this was done in a way that maintain the quality and integrity of services.
• Noted that it is an exceedingly difficult situation, but the focus is being maintained on impact of Covid-19 with both rigour and consistency.
• Noted that regarding those schools that have delivered food to households rather than provide food vouchers it is felt they are best placed to decide how to manage within the various demands of the made upon them.
• Noted that equalities impact assessments would always be undertaken as part of any restructure and careful consideration would be given to the impact on any of the protected characteristics for the community and staff.
• Noted regarding Children's and Social Care staffing there are three elements to this (i) it is about recruiting newly qualified or social workers at the beginning of their career and assist in their training and by doing that and if done right they will stay loyal to LBTH; (ii) finding that blend of experienced social workers by using a recruitment company to help the source experienced social workers and now have developed an in-house recruitment programme with advertising that  can be used across all sorts of platforms and that is beginning to prove really helpful together with a microsite on the Councils website so that experienced social workers can see what LBTH are doing and read testimonials; (iii) the success in persuading a number of agency social workers to become permanent.
• Noted that the children's social care pressures historically shows that LBTH manages demand a relatively low level compared to statistical neighbours which is a positive indicator that LBTH has been able to support a higher proportion of children and young people within their family networks as opposed to needing to come into care. Therefore, LBTH are in a good place and needs to maintain focus to stay in that place
• Noted that when considering overspends and budget delivery it is clear about additional Covid-19 pressures with the ongoing overspends or ongoing budget delivery problems.

The main points of the discussion on the Overspends in Health, Adults & Community may be summarised as follows.

Health, Adults & Community

The Committee:

• Noted that (i) the Public Health budget primarily covers staffing and commissioning that has been stable during the pandemic; (ii) there is a local Outbreak Plan funding which is additional to the other Public Health budgets; and (iii) the impact of Tower Rewards on Public Health is minimal.
• Noted that Public Health has (i) undertaken significant reprioritisation during the pandemic; and (ii) most of their resource have been focused on the response to the pandemic.
• Noted there has been an increase in mental health cases and LBTH are looking across health and social care. Also, in terms of feedback from the community and residents more generally there has been a huge sense of increased anxiety/depression because of lockdown and of uncertainty in relation to other issues.
• Noted that in addressing budget pressures it is not possible to make sweeping decisions about taking certain types of service out of packages. It must be based on an individual assessment and review. Therefore, the Directorate has been careful, with input from the principal social worker who has oversite on maintaining quality and practice in that regard. Therefore, this is a top issue for the Directorate to get that balance right when addressing budget pressures.
• Noted the Directorate has undertaken considerable work on budget responsibility/accountability to help budget managers understand and monitor their expenditure. This work having progressed on the back of earlier work to reinforce the role of a budget manager with workshops and support for different types of budget managers. They were also offered specific training and support e.g. Accruals to make sure that people's knowledge and skills were up to date. This was done through a cascade approach to through one to one’s and supervision being really clear about budget accountability and making sure that the budget is always a focus from each of the divisional directors and they in turn with each of their senior teams and some of the deep dives have supported managers where there are significant budget pressures. The Directorate also has their finance business partner and finance teams supporting them through a detailed monthly and if necessary weekly meetings where the detail of budget can be gone through.
• Noted more staff are using the budget management software on a regular basis which is a significance step forward and is the proper way to manage budget forecasting.
• Noted that the overspend as we as we call it is a cost pressure in the scale of the need and the Directorate are having to continuously manage that need and this is presenting the biggest challenges for the Service and agreed that it would be it would be good to revisit this issue at a future meeting.

The Chair Moved and it was: -

RESOLVED to note the presentations and ask that the points raised where appropriate be included in the work programme.

ACTION BY: Sharon Godman, (Divisional Director, Strategy, Policy and Performance)