To review projected revenue outturn for 2017/18 and invite cabinet members to consider performance for the first two months of the year.

The cabinet member for financial management and ICT introduced the report. He stated that this was the first report of the current financial year and that the projected overspend of £1.85m was mainly due to:

·         an increase in LAC since the budget had been set;

·         savings in relation to LAC having not been fully realised at this stage; and

·         increases in the numbers of nursing client placements with physical support needs.

The cabinet member noted that 58% of performance measures were showing a positive shift compared to the same period in the previous year. He highlighted points for each directorate:

Adults Wellbeing

·         a programme to implement assistive technology to support clients with learning disabilities was underway which would allow users to maintain independent lives within the community rather than have to live in residential placements;

Children’s Wellbeing

·         the majority of new social work assessments were completed within the statutory timescales;

Economy, Communities and Corporate

·         the new economic strategy had been launched;

·         the city centre link road was expected to be completed by the end of the year;

·         the council’s new website had won two awards and had been given a four star better connected score from SOCITM.

The group leaders were invited to make comments on behalf of their group.

The leader of the Herefordshire Independent’s group noted the reduction in the use of agency staff and the improvement in the completion of social work assessments within statutory timescales. He asked if there was any particular reason for the increase in the number of LAC and what had caused the percentage of referrals accepted for assessment to be too low.

The cabinet member for young people and children’s wellbeing responded that Herefordshire had a historically high number of LAC and that plans were in place to reassess individual circumstances to see if children needed to remain looked after or if other arrangements would be more appropriate. The number of children who would need to become looked after was not an easy thing to predict and the council had to react to events as they unfolded.

The interim director of children’s wellbeing explained that having a higher percentage of referrals accepted would indicate that the thresholds for referral were understood and that appropriate evidence was being presented. Work needed to be done with the police and other partners to make sure the criteria were understood.

The leader of the It’s Our County group asked:

·         where the £18m income into the ECC directorate was included and what it was being spent on;

·         what the predicted shortfall was by 2019 between council tax revenue and business rates income, in relation to the loss of the core grant;

·         whether the council had a view on the analysis presented at the LGA conference by Grant Thornton, the council’s external auditors, which indicated that the ECC directorate spent more in comparison with other authorities on its own running costs and that the adults and children’s directorates spent less than comparator authorities; and

·         whether the council would enfold the data from the recently published report ‘understanding county economies’ produced on behalf of the county council network into its assessments, the report showed a great deal of data that showed Herefordshire in a far worse position than the councils own data.

The leader of the council stated that he had not yet read the report produced for the county council network but that once he had this would be shared with cabinet colleagues and the cabinet would take such action as it deemed appropriate.

The cabinet member for financial management and ICT undertook to provide a written response to the group leader on the other points raised.

Resolved that:

(a)           performance for the first two months of 2017/18 and projected financial outturn are reviewed and cabinet determines any additional actions required to achieve improvement; and

(b)          £200k be vired from the waste management budget to the community services budget.