Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance

Forward Plan Ref: 2020/118

Contact: Louise Tustian, Head of Insight & Corporate Programmes Tel: 07741 607452/Hannah Doney, Head of Corporate Finance Tel: 07584 174654

 

Report by Corporate Director Customers & Organisational Development and Director of Finance (CA6).

 

This report sets out Oxfordshire County Council’s (OCC’s) progress towards Corporate Plan priorities for 2020/21 – November 2020.

 

The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to note this month’s business management and monitoring report.

Cabinet considered a report which set out Oxfordshire County Council's progress towards Corporate Plan priorities and provided an update on the delivery of the Medium-Term Financial Plan, at 30 November 2020. The monthly business management reports were part of a suite of performance, leadership risk and budget documents which set out the Council’s ambitions, priorities and financial performance. The Corporate Plan set out the Council’s ambitions for the next two years, under the vision for Thriving Communities. It further set out the priority activities for the current business year.

 

Councillor Liz Brighouse, Chairman of the Performance Scrutiny Committee highlighted issues from the Performance Scrutiny Committee.  She reported that the Committee had felt that it was vital that the Council set more serious targets for carbon reduction in line with the long-term ambition of being carbon neutral by 2030 because the current indicator of Green hardly reflected the amount of work that needs to be done to achieve that.

 

It was noted that the indicator for air quality was Amber in a year which has seen a large reduction in road traffic.  The Committee indicated that it would like more information on why that was the case.  There was a need to push more quickly for the installation of LED street lighting as part of our commitment to reduce carbon emissions and save money.

 

Regarding the new Home First programme, the Committee questioned whether care workers who are going into people’s homes were being prioritised for COVID-19 vaccines?

 

Members wondered if the Click and Collect service was regarded as an essential service given that other similar services have been halted due to COVID.

 

Finally, the Committee looked forward to discussing the Outcomes Framework in the new financial year and reviewing the targets and tolerances.

 

In relation to the points from the Performance Scrutiny Committee around their Zero Carbon targets, Councillor Constance commented that they were doubling the target previously set and were expecting their own estate to be net zero by 2030, it was a very significant target and she did not understand the comments from the Performance Scrutiny Committee.  In relation to air quality in the Risk Register being amber, despite the reduction in traffic last year, she reported that it had been noted by officers, and thought that perhaps it showed that the air quality in Oxford had already improved.  The LED street lighting project was well underway with over 3,000 streetlights already replaced and there was negotiation underway for a new contractor.  She undertook to go back to Councillor Brighouse on the non-reduction of air quality in the City.

 

Councillor Brighouse commented that their issue on the green indicator for zero carbon was that if you already had a green indicator, there wasn’t much room for pushing further.

 

Councillor Constance gave an assurance that the green indicator did not mean that they would reduce the target and that OCC was the only Council to have set action in place.

 

Councillor Grey noted the Performance Scrutiny Committees comments around Equality, diversity and inclusivity.  He suggested to Councillor Brighouse that they sit down with officers and discuss the situation.

 

Councillor Glynis Phillips, Shadow Cabinet Member for Finance noted the report reflected the changing ways that the County Council was adapting to delivering its services with the majority of officers working from home and the closure of libraries, museums and trading standards. However not all staff could work from home and the report highlighted highway teams, carers, teachers and frontline health and social care staff who were still providing front facing services.

 

She commented that the report on page 16 described the benefits of the ‘micro-surfacing’ programme which was a cost-effective and convenient method which protected surfaces for around 10 years. Given its obvious benefits, she questioned why the method wasn’t used routinely to surface all roads and why the method had only been used for specific programmes since 2016.

 

She noted that there was good news around school attendance figures at the start of December, but a worrying increase in the number of children who were electively home school educated. The Performance Scrutiny Committee had on 14 January, heard about the lessons learnt following a Serious Case Review involving a home educated child. More needed to be done to ensure that the County Council could carry out its safeguarding responsibilities and the Education Scrutiny Committee would look at this issue again.

 

She emphasised the importance of acknowledging the effectiveness of the Early Help Networks but noted that it was against the background of every increasing demand for children’s social care services and the likely legacy of increasing number of children needing child protection plans. The report advised that the financial impact of Covid19 would not end on 31 March 2021 and the impact on children’s lives would also go well beyond 2021.

 

She noted that the only change to the risk register was to reduce the risk levels associated with financial resilience from 3 to 2 in 2021/2022 because of the mitigations in place and the degree of certainty in the next financial year. There were financial uncertainties in the report including unrealised savings in this financial year being carried forward to next year, the financial impact of Covid 19 beyond March 2021, a RED rag rating for the Early Years dedicated Schools Grant and a forecast described as ‘risky’ in relation to packages of care for children with significant support needs. She questioned what the Cabinet Member for Finance’s assessment was of the financial risk.

 

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Hudspeth expressed his thanks to all the staff for their flexibility and adaptability of working from home and to those who continued to work from various locations.  There was a very robust Health & Safety Plan to ensure that if people did have to work from a location, they had to go through a rigorous process to ensure that all the Covid preventions were in place.  The safety of staff was a key concern and if any member of staff had a particular concern, they could raise it with their manager to deal with.

 

Councillor Bartholomew responding to the question from Councillor Phillips around the financial risk, commented that further detail on this area would be discussed under the Budget item, but that in all their financial projections and analysis they were fully cognisant of the fact that the risk did not end on 31 March and that there were sufficient contingencies in place and provisions within the Covid Budget to deal with the extension of the pandemic.  The finances had always been managed prudently and the finances were robust, so in terms of risk for the forthcoming year, he was confident that they were managing all their risks in the best possible way.

 

Councillor Heathcoat, Deputy Leader of the Council, in introducing the report stated that the report before the Cabinet covered performance for November last year.  The report continued to show the largely positive performance, despite the prolonged challenges caused by the ongoing pandemic.  In December last year, the 27 performance indications were 12 rated green and 14 rated amber.  She was pleased to advise, that despite the difficult challenges they faced, the performance indicators showed that 14 were now rated green and 12 amber and that they had no indicators that were red.  There was one indicator that they were unable to report on due to Covid 19.

 

This continued steady performance was due (as recognised by other members of the Cabinet) in no small part to the workforce and their continued to give support and advice to communities and many undertaking their roles working from home not always in easy circumstances.

 

The second lockdown commenced on the 5 November to 2 December and had an impact on services such as libraries, museums and trading standards.  In relation to her portfolio (Community safety) they continued to carry out safe and well visits in line with Covid 19 guidance and they ensure that priority was given to critical and high-risk households.

 

The trading standards team continued to work successfully on doorstep scams and crimes which were targeting the elderly using innovative techniques.  Crimes such as taking money for shopping and never returning and charging for a fake Covid vaccine.

 

There had also been ongoing work in partnership with the Fire Cadets on test purchasing of e-cigarettes and vaping liquid, trading standards had also continued to some of its business intervention activities, particularly in traffic – weight restriction enforcement and business related Covid 19 compliance.

 

The Fire & Rescue Service continued to deliver their high standard of service by being only 3% below their stretched target of attending 80% of incidents within 11 minutes and were always seeking to improve the average response time of 8 minutes, 44 seconds reported in November which was very good for a service covering such a large rural area.

 

The leadership risk register was included in the report.  All leadership risks had been assessed thoroughly and there had been one score change LR11 which was changed for 15 to 10.  The report supports that they were facing the challenges well, but she stressed that they were not complacent.

 

Councillor Bartholomew in introducing the report, explained that the report set out the forecast position of the revenue budget as at the end of November 2020 and included an update on the MTFS savings, reserves and balances in Annex C.

 

He thanked Lorna Baxter, Hannah Doney and Emma Greenland for preparing those aspects of the report.

 

The Council had set a Revised Budget for 2020/21 in September in response to the financial impact of COVID-19, to ensure a balanced budget could be achieved in the current financial year and to ensure the Council remained financially sustainable. The Budget and Business Planning process for 2021/22 to 2025/26 was reaching its conclusion and the Cabinet’s proposed budget for 2021/22 and Medium-Term Financial Strategy to 2025/26 followed this agenda item. The Council would continue with its approach of responsible, measured and careful financial planning to ensure it could manage the pandemic response and recovery phases.

 

In relation to 2020/21, based on expenditure to the end of November 2020, including the virements agreed by Council on 8 September 2020 and further virements agreed by Cabinet on 15 December to fund costs arising from COVID-19, there is a forecast business-as-usual underspend of -£1.1m within directorates and a net underspend on Corporate Page 2 of 3 Measures of -£0.7m. The underspend has increased by £0.2m since the last report due to an increase in the forecast for interest received on Treasury Management investments.

 

Annex C-5b set out the total COVID-19 funding the Council has received for 2020/21 of £64.1m. Of this, £36.3m has been allocated to the general fund. A further update on the Contain Outbreak Management Fund would be included in the next report. The Council continues to closely monitor the financial impact of COVID-19 and the forecast for additional costs and income losses for the

remainder of 2020/21 and into 2021/22. The COVID-19 Budget for costs and income losses is a one-off budget that is available to fund these pressures. The profile and timing may mean that some costs may fall into a different financial year – it is expected that the financial impact of COVID-19 would extend beyond 31 March 2021 into the medium term. Further virements to move budget from the COVID-19 budget to the services where costs have occurred, or income losses are realised, would be requested in future reports before year end. The current forecast for general balances at 31 March 2021 is £30.5m, compared to the position at 1 April 2020 of £28.7m. This position assumed that forecast Directorate underspend of £1.1m and the Strategic Measures underspend of £0.7m are returned to balances. Of planned savings, 84.6% totalling £18.4m remain on track to be delivered in 2020/21. Savings of £1.6m that are not expected to be achieved in-year are reflected in the Directorate forecast outturn position. The majority of these savings relate to income generation which has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and will be funded from the COVID-19 Budget for costs and income losses. All the £14.9m in-year savings agreed by Council on 8 September are on track to be fully delivered. Annex C provided further commentary on variations greater than £0.1m for each service.  He urged Cabinet to agree to the recommendations set out at paragraph 1 to the report.

 

Councillor Harrod spoke in relation to page 14 report which referred to how they strived to give every child a good start in life. The average number of contacts into the MASH service each week was now 483 and the service was only staffed to deal with 350 contacts.  This had been dealt with by appointing additional temporary staff to deal with the situation, but it indicated the pressure front line staff were working under.  He thanked the staff for their hard work and dedication in dealing with the 30% increase in contacts since September last year and pointed out that at the same time, assessment and referrals were down by 5% on average, which showed the system was working by having a very robust front door at the MASH, avoiding unnecessary instances of cases being passed down the line.  The Leader added his thanks to those staff.

 

Councillor Constance drew the Cabinet’s attention to page 13 of the report and the near arrival of active travel improvements for Witney and Bicester, there would also be schemes in Oxford.  She emphasised that although the vale of white horse had felt left out, they had just completed the first phase of the science vale cycle network which will connect Wantage with Didcot, Culham and Harwell. There was significant work being carried out in the County for cycling.

 

Councillor Lindsay-Gale responded to the comment made by Councillor Phillips regarding the increase in electively Home-schooled children.  She noted that the increase was still below the national average.  She reported that officers were working with families.  One of the schools of thought was that perhaps parents had found that educating children at home was not as difficult as they thought it would be, but she came from the point of view that a child’s place was in school, and they were working very actively with the families to ensure that they were coping and to try and encourage them that their children can come back to school education as and when allowed.

 

RESOLVED:  to note this month’s business management and monitoring report.