Agenda item

Action

Claire White presented the report on the DSG 2015/16 and the overall budget proposals.

The Schools’ Block

The DSG allocation for 2015/16 has now been fixed by the DfE at £96.093m on 17^th December 2014 and it has been assumed that there will be no carry forward of funds in this block. It had previously been agreed that the headroom in the Schools’ Block would be allocated to the schools’ budgets. Whilst the Schools’ Forum members accepted that schools will have to pay for more central services they were mindful of the need to balance allocating funding to schools and protecting services. The balance of £3k funding available in this block is due to the final licences fees for 2015/16 being slightly less than estimated.

The Early Years Block

The current allocation from the DfE is based on the 3 and 4 year olds counted in the January 2014 census whereas the final allocation will be based on 5/12 of the January 2015 census and 7/12 on the January 2016 census for 2, 3 and 4 year olds.

Our own calculation of the 2015/16 budget allocation has been based on the January 2015 census and also assumes an in year increase in 2 year olds accessing the free entitlement. The estimated allocation is £7.729m including a carry forward of £0.722m and the proposed budget is £7.715m, leaving a balance of £14k funding available.

The High Needs Block

The High Needs Block funding is now fixed at £17.911m assuming a £200k carry forward from 2014/15 as one off funding, although the latest forecast indicates the carry forward may be nearer £300k. The proposed budget is £18.951m, £1.040m in excess of the funding available. Savings totalling £835k have been proposed, still leaving a shortfall of £205k.

The net position (after the proposed savings) is a shortfall of £187k.

Following detailed consideration of agenda items 7, 8 and 9 the decisions were:

DECISION: The Early Years budget was agreed, plus the £10k proposed saving in SEN Pre- School Funding will now be funded from the Early Years Block funding instead of being a cut from the High Needs Block.

DECISION: The Schools’ Forum agreed all the High Needs savings EXCEPT for the proposed Language and Literacy Unit (LAL) saving of £67,300.

DECISION: The shortfall across the three funding blocks of £264k (after deducting the LAL proposed saving and SEN pre-school saving) will be met from any additional one-off under spend from 2014/15 which will be known once the annual accounts have been closed. If there is still a shortfall the assumption is that there will be in-year savings, though this will be closely monitored. 

It was noted that use of approximately £464k of one off funding on High Needs services in 2015/16 will require further savings to be found from this block in 2016/17.