Agenda item

Budget Planning

To receive and consider a report giving details of the budget planning process, which addresses concerns about the 2015/16 budget setting process and recommends new ways of budget planning.

 

 

 

Minutes:

The Forum received and considered a report set out on Agenda pages 23 to 26 giving suggestions of a new way of budget planning for the future and detailing the process and background behind the setting of the 2015/16 budget, to address concerns raised at the last meeting. 

 

Matt Marsden said that in reviewing the 2015/16 budget setting process, weaknesses had been identified, and the report set out suggested actions to improve the process in future.  The key issues to address were:

·                to engage the Forum with budget discussion earlier in the year;

·                to have a medium term vision of the future to better enable strategic planning;

·                to create a less formal meeting space in which appropriate exploratory discussions can take place.

The suggestions in the report were to:

·                develop a 3/5 year medium term financial plan, each year;

·                create a Forum sub Working Group to review and challenge the assumptions of the plan, particularly in relation to central funding;

·                present a high level indicative budget for the following year to the Forum in July.

 

During the discussion the following points were made:

·                no additional funding/grant is received for the growth in pupil numbers in September until the following financial year;

·                this lack of up-front funding is a national issue, our neighbouring authorities are in a similar situation, and Local authorities are lobbying for a change;

·                funding the growth affects current school budgets, but there is no possibility of obtaining a loan from another part of the Council’s budget;

·                to avoid schools having late information it may be possible to provide models showing the high level impact on types of schools, but not for individual schools - this is work that could be done in the Working Group

·                this year when testing the budget, the information given by the Department for Education (DfE) was wrong, and even now we only have indicative figures for some allocations, which will not be finalised until June;

·                the additional funding mentioned by the Government was to fund the new requirements around the extension of provision of services to 19 to 25 year olds;

·                recent national publicity has shown that Wokingham Borough receives the lowest level of Guaranteed Unit of Funding per child in the country;

·                People need the right level of knowledge/ understanding, as it is hard to challenge the issues without that.  Training could be possible through the National Association of School Managers;

·                Setting up a small working group in an informal setting/environment would allow more working together and open discussion on proposals;

·                Benchmarking information can be discussed – the official statistics for 2013/14, the first year after the reforms are on the DfE website, however the information on academies is for 2011/12, so is a bit out of date;

 

It was suggested that the Working Group be time limited and given specific tasks.  Suggestions for tasks and draft Terms of Reference will be circulated electronically to all Forum Members, with the membership appointed at the Forum meeting on 20 May.

 

RESOLVED: That:

·                a Forum sub Working Group be created to review and challenge the assumptions budget planning, particularly in relation to central funding;

·                suggestions for tasks for the Working Group and Draft Terms of Reference be circulated electronically before the May meeting of the Forum;

·                a 3/5 year medium term financial plan be developed;

·                a high level indicative budget for the following year be presented to the Forum in July. 

 

Supporting documents: