Agenda item

Claire White introduced the report (agenda item seven), which summarised a bid that had been received from a school in deficit to access funding from the schools in financial difficulty de-delegated fund. 

Since April 2013, local authorities had been required to delegate to all schools the contingency previously held for schools in financial difficulty. Each phase in the maintained sector then had the option to de-delegate and pool this funding with allocations made to schools that required it. This decision was made on an annual basis.

The budget for 2017/18 was £314,650, which included the carry forward of the unspent budget from 2016/17 of £194,670. No payments had so far been made in the 2017/18 financial year.

A bid had been received from Long Lane Primary School for £28,000 (out of a total deficit of £55,740) to cover one-off redundancy payments. The school had been managing an annual reduction in pupil numbers over the previous four years, mainly due to Purley Infants becoming a primary school. The main reason for the deficit was that pupil numbers were over estimated within the school’s longer term planning.

The bid for funding had been received by the Heads Funding Group on the 5^th July 2017 and it was recommending approval of the bid (subject to verification of the robustness of the deficit recovery plan), with payment being the actual redundancy costs incurred up to a maximum of £28k.

Keith Harvey, who also sat on the Heads Funding Group, expressed the view that it was a strong bid and it was clear that it was being required for exceptional circumstances.

Paul Dick referred to paragraph 4.4 of the report and raised concern that the deficit recovery plan had not yet been reviewed in detail by Finance Officers at West Berkshire Council. Claire White confirmed that they had not yet been through the deficit plan in detail. In the unlikely event there was an issue which significantly changed their deficit position, the bid would be brought back to the Schools’ Forum.

Catie Colston questioned how far ahead the school had looked in terms of the effects of staff reductions on maintaining standards. Ian Pearson stated that this had not yet been set out in the context of discussions. Consideration had been given to what staffing was deemed as appropriate for the size of the primary school.

The Chairman invited Members of the Forum to vote on whether to approve the bid from Long Lane Primary School. Chris Davis proposed that the bid should be approved and this was seconded by Catie Colston.

RESOLVED that the bid for Long Lane Primary School be approved (subject to verification of the robustness of the deficit recovery plan).