Agenda item

Claire White introduced the report, which set out the 2018/19 DSG settlement for each block. Claire White stated that the high needs and early years budgets had just been agreed and therefore the overall position as set out in section four of the report was accurate.

Claire White drew attention to paragraph 6.4 under the section on the Central Schools Services Block, which stated that although the Council’s Executive had agreed to meeting the statutory and regulatory duties costs in 2018/19, this would only be a one year decision and there would be a requirement to find significant savings in 2019/20. In addition the funding for this block would reduce by about £25k in 2019/20.

Keith Watts asked if the matter of larger authorities being awarded higher levels of funding had been raised. Claire White reported that this had been included within the Local Authorities response to the consultation. Larger authorities were gaining more with regards to their Central Schools Services Block and as a result many were transferring some of this funding into their high needs budget. Claire White added that despite this these authorities were still setting a deficit budget.

Ian Pearson reported that there was a parallel issue with the Central Schools Services and High Needs Block Budgets, regarding the proxy measures that were used to calculate funding. It was possible that these measures were impacting upon authorities with a particular profile and Officers would continue to seek opportunities raise this issue with the DfE.  Ian Pearson was of the view that as  schools funding included  a lump sum, perhaps the formula for these DSG blocks should also include a lump sum.

The Chairman invited the Schools’ Forum to vote on whether to agree the recommendations set out in section two. David Ramsden proposed that the recommendations be agreed and this was seconded by Chris Davis. At the vote the motion was carried.

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum agreed the following recommendations:

1.  To agree the final DSG (schools) budget for each block as set out in each section of the report and in Appendix B to the report.

2.  To agree the overall deficit budget in 2018/19 of £655,040.