Agenda item

Jane Seymour introduced the report (Agenda Item 10), which informed the Schools’ Forum about the Delivering Better Value Programme (DBV).

Jane Seymour reported that West Berkshire was one of 55 Local Authorities (LAs), which were part of the Government’s Delivering Better Value (DBV) Programme. 20 LAs with the highest overspends in their High Needs Block (HNB) were part of the Safety Valve Programme.

There were three tranches of the DBV Programme based on the level of overspend, with LAs with the higher overspends in tranche one. West Berkshire would be in tranche three, suggesting it had one of the lower overspends.

An initial meeting had taken place with the DBV Team and the initial piece of work had been to provide some very detailed pupil level data which had been submitted successfully. The data which had been submitted would feed in to a diagnostic process which would predict future spend and identify key drivers of rising HNB costs. West Berkshire would also be attending conferences in August and September and as part of this process would be asked to look in detail at some case studies. This would involve key staff in the LA and stakeholders including schools. Consultants would then work with the LA to provide a programme of activities to address key drivers based on the diagnostic. 

There would be the opportunity to bid for up to £1m to implement projects. This would be one off funding and sustainability would need to be considered and how it could help to address the overspend in the HNB in the long term.

Jane Seymour explained that some funding had been provided to help oversee the work and the intention was to use this to recruit a member of staff to project manage the area. It was thought that West Berkshire would be ready to make a bid for the grant funding by December 2023.

Catie Colston raised her concern about the approach as it was one that had been used in other areas previously. It was a very resource intensive and expensive process aimed at trying to find out what areas could be improved. Catie Colston felt it was worth engaging and thanked those who had put effort in to doing so. Catie Colston commented however that she was not aware of anything significant being found historically when using this approach that had provided a sustainable impact. Catie Colston suspected that what would be discovered was that one of the key drivers of the overspend was that there was not enough money. She was not convinced that a different answer would be found.  

Reverend Mark Bennet echoed the comments and concerns raised by Catie Colston and felt that £1m was a relatively small amount of money to do anything other than re-arrange what was already in place. He did not feel that the money would solve the problem.

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum noted the report.