Agenda item

(Richard Hawthorne left the meeting at 5.57pm)

Jane Seymour introduced the report (Agenda Item 11), which set out the current financial position of the High Needs Block (HNB) budget for 2021/22 and the position as far as it can be predicted for 2022/23, including the likely shortfall. Jane Seymour reported that there were not many changes to the information since the Forum had last viewed the report in January. The main reason the report had been brought back to the Forum was because there had been an increase in the net shortfall in 2022/23 and in terms of the carried forward overspend.

Jane Seymour drew attention to section 3.7 of the report, which detailed that the net shortfall in the 2022-23 HNB budget was £5,980,129, this had previously been just under £5.2 million when the report was last brought to the Forum in January.  

The reason for the increase was primarily because the Local Authority (LA) no longer received a separate grant for increases in teacher pay and pensions in special schools and PRUs. These costs now had to be absorbed by the HNB, which was not reflected in the previous figures and would be an impact going forward.

The increase in the next financial year compared to previous figures was just over £300k and the total increase including the impact on the current year’s budget was about £780k. Apart from this no other significant changes were predicted.

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum noted the report.