Issue - meetings

(1)       That Council is recommended to approve a balanced budget for 2016/17 based on a combination of the previously adopted Stage One proposals and the new Stage Two of £3.571m as set out within Table 1 of the Council report; and

(2)       That Council calls on Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to allocate a proportion of the additional Intermediate Care Fund monies granted by Welsh Government to assist the Council, in its capacity as a commissioner of care, in meeting the increasing provider costs within the local residential and nursing and specialist provider independent care sector to both sustain the provider market and protect the secondary and acute health sector from increased demand.

Councillor Shotton introduced the budget options for the closing Stage Two of the annual budget process, adding them to the budget proposals adopted at Stage One in January, for recommendation of a balanced budget to County Council that afternoon.

            He expressed his thanks to all Chief Officers, Cabinet Members and employees for their help in achieving a balanced budget in what had been the most difficult year faced by the authority to date.  He was pleased that a balanced budget had been achieved without devastation to public services and commented on the protection of the three local authority care homes, leisure centres and additional funding for schools budgets during the difficult budget process.

            The Chief Executive explained that Stage Two was before Members for consideration, with the previous Stage One being appended for information.  The remaining Stage Two budget options were detailed in fully the report and reflected how the amount of £3.517M would be met, which were:

·         Review of New and Emergent Pressures;

·         Workforce;

·         Council Tax;

·         Use of Reserves and Balances; and

·         Other Adjustments.

There were eight significant risks outlined in full in the report, which were:

·         Impact of reductions in Specific Grant funds;

·         Inflationary impacts;

·         Failure to achieve income targets in full;

·         Failure to achieve efficiency targets in full;

·         Insufficient capacity to implement change programmes and projects to time and to financial target;

·         Impact of new and emergent pressures;

·         Over use of reserves and balances; and

·         Sufficiency of remaining reserves and balances to meet unforeseen pressures.

The Chief Executive said the Council would have to have a greater ‘appetite’ for risk which was the same for all public bodies in the fiscal climate.  He explained that provided the risks were understood, the likelihood of their occurring and the impact they would make if they did so occur was assessed, and there were sufficient plans to mitigate those impacts in that eventuality, then the approach to risk could be supported.  An underlying organisational risk was that there was less financial flexibility to adjust to new cost pressures in year as budgets were more precisely based on forecast need with smaller margins for flexibility and error, with the total quantum of funding available to the Council as a corporate body being smaller than in recent years.

He provided details of a service issue which had been raised late in the budget process, which was the provision of a weekly allowance to the clients of the Learning Disability Workforce Schemes. Cabinet, since the publication of the January budget report, had directed that this allowance be continued for 2016/17 and the budget reinstated.  This required a budget provision of £0.070M which had the impact of increasing the remaining gap to £3.517M.

An additional area for consideration was the discussions and negotiations that were ongoing between the independent care providers and the Council for commissioned services in residential, nursing, specialist care, domiciliary care, and direct payments, over the rate of annual uplift for to inflationary costs in the sector.

The Final Settlement was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 131