Agenda item

To receive and consider a report outlining details of the Budget reconciliation.

Paul Miller explained that at the last meeting it had been identified that the figures in the Budget report did not reconcile and Schools Forum had asked for clarifications.  In response to this, several meetings had taken place to understand what had happened and reconcile the figures.  Graham Ebers, Corporate Services Director had written an explanatory report as set out in Agenda pages 15-20. 

Paul Miller stated that the Budget that Schools Forum had approved in January 2017 had contained figures that were not sufficiently robust and included mathematical errors.  Subsequently, Officers had undertaken a lot of work and produced a revised Budget containing accurate information, this was shown in column F, page 19.  Column F was the set of figures that Schools Forum should have been looking at when approving the Budget in January.  Schools Forum were now being asked to decide whether to accept column F as the Budget for 2017/18.  Paul stated that Schools Forum would also need to decide whether to accept an in-year deficit for 2017/18 and its impact upon the total reserves.

Coral Miller informed that Officers had looked at the figures line by line in order to ascertain the correct figures.  She also informed that a workshop had taken place to go through this work in detail, she offered to stay after the meeting and explain it again if necessary.

During the discussion of the item the following comments were made:

·           John Bayes questioned the figure on line 10 page 19 in relation to the £250K PE Grant – additional school grants and added that this issue had been raised at the last meeting by Derren Gray.  Coral stated that any grant received from the DfE was passported to schools, she believed that it was not included in another line;

·           Paul Miller stated that Schools Forum was seeking transparency and John Ogden, Lead Finance Specialist offered to investigate and report back;

·           Derren Gray questioned the figure of £370K in line 17 page 19 in relation to Early Years centrally retained for statutory LA duties and the figures in line 16 in relation to Early Years contingency – providers only.  He would like to know why contingency was needed.  Jane Winterbone explained that in her experience the Early Years centrally retained fund was for statutory duties and the contingencies fund was held in case additional numbers came in after census day in relation to lagged funding.  She was not certain of how much claim there had been on that and whether this was being reported to Schools Forum;

·           Mary Parker stated that this was the first time Early Years funding was being top sliced in Wokingham;

·           Jane Winterbone stated that Wokingham benchmarked favourably in relation to its percentage top slice of Early Years funding;

·           Coral Miller stated that the regulator allowed for 7%, but Wokingham top sliced 4% from Early Years. The contingencies went out to providers and this was because there were three census dates a year and every time there was a census there was an adjustment on pupil numbers;

·           Mary Parker stated that she believed that the take up of the 30 hour free childcare would increase;

·           John Ogden offered to include a breakdown of how the contingencies money to Early Years was being used in future monitoring reports;

·           Ginny Rhodes asked for the narrative behind the variances in line 36 page 19 in relation to School Admissions.  Coral stated that School Admissions was funded by centrally retained funds as it was one of the statutory services that the Local Authority had to provide.  Paul Miller explained that the variances observed in the report were due to error in reporting;

·           Jane Winterbone explained that School Admissions was now placed under Customer Services.  Members of the Forum asked for more information in relation to the expenditure in School Admissions in preparation for the 2018/19 Budget, including benchmarking with other authorities;

·           John Bayes believed that there was around £60 per pupil expenditure in relation to admissions to school.

Paul Miller thanked Officers for all their work to bring more clarity around the numbers.  He felt confident that the current figures were now accurate.

Schools Forum had a robust discussion around the Budget that was agreed in January and the column F of the report containing revised figures.  After much deliberation it was agreed that the Budget that was agreed in January should have the mathematical corrections made to it and continue to be referred to as the Budget for 2017/18. 

RESOLVED That:

1)     Finance Officers would undertake a the various further clarifications that were requested during the discussion of the item and report back to Schools Forum;

2)     The Budget that was approved in January would have its mathematical errors corrected and continue to be referred to as the approved Budget for 2017/18; and

3)     The column F of the report would be called a Forecast and Schools Forum would refer to the Forecast for revenue monitoring purposes for the remainder of this financial year.