Agenda item

Question

May I congratulate the officers in this enterprising paper, support for the preventative service is something I have long advocated.  You are increasing the money available to the voluntary services excellently in 2022/3 but the increase in 2023/4 is only £100km that is 5% or not much more than inflation.  As the voluntary sector grows due to more certainty that this funding provides along with increased demand and need will further monies be available to fund new preventative and first step services that are valuable assets to the Council?

Answer

Thank you for supporting this paper on the procurement of voluntary sector adult services. I am pleased to note that we have cross party support as far as I can find, for our approach to the much-valued voluntary sector.  The first point to make here is that inflationary increases are dealt with from a separate additional funding stream in the MTFP.  The details of this are agreed through an annual inflationary uplift process.  This means that the £600K increase over 2 years is in the region of a 30% gross increase against our early intervention and prevention agenda.  I think you will agree this is impressive given the pressures on local government and the uncertainty we have in central government funding going forward. 

We will of course keep this under review each year through our budget setting process and will be having regular conversations with the Voluntary Sector providers as part of our contract monitoring and management process.  Our ambition is that if the new spend successfully helps us manage demand and we can afford it we will of course consider more investment having evaluated any requirements raised by our providers and taking into account our own view of the services in place alongside any changing needs in this sector.

We recognise that funding is a difficult issue for the voluntary sector and that they are dependent on a number of funding streams to support their viability.  We cannot and will not ignore the invaluable contribution made by the voluntary sector and we will continue to support them to maximise those external streams which are available to them.

Supplementary Question

Thank you for that answer and certainly, as I have said, it is something that I have advocated for many years, last time I was on the Council as well, not always with success.  With regards to new services required by the Council from the voluntary sector, has an investigation been done in areas other than dementia into the gaps in voluntary service that are already offered, and the way new services can be provided by the voluntary sector to enhance the lives of residents?

Supplementary Answer,

Yes, thank you for that David.  I think that you will hear in my speech later that there has been quite a big consultation process across the voluntary sector services to understand where they can identify gaps, as well as the ones that we can identify, and to put in place the best options that we have so that we can procure appropriately.  That is really at the core of this paper, and supports those procurements on an ongoing basis.