Agenda and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence and temporary appointments.

The following Councillors tendered apologies:

-        Cllr Brighouse (Cllr Hicks substituting)

-        Cllr Miller

Cllr Phillips pointed out that funding within the Cost of Living item was partially being spent to support an advice centre in her division.

Cllr Hicks declared during the Cost of Living item that his partner was employed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.

Members of the public who wish to speak at this meeting can attend the meeting in person or ‘virtually’ through an online connection. 

To facilitate ‘hybrid’ meetings we are asking that requests to speak or present a petition are submitted by no later than 9am four working days before the meeting i.e., 9am on 06 November 2023.  Requests to speak should be sent to Tom Hudson, Scrutiny Manager, at scrutiny@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

If you are speaking ‘virtually’, you may submit a written statement of your presentation to ensure that your views are taken into account. A written copy of your statement can be provided no later than 9am 2 working days before the meeting. Written submissions should be no longer than 1 A4 sheet.

None

The Committee previously received a report concerning the Council’s Cost of Living response. This report provides an update on the activity in this area.

Cllr Nathan Ley, Cabinet Member for Public Health, Inequalities and Community Safety, Robin Rogers, Programme Director, Partnerships and Delivery, and Paul Wilding, Programme Manager, Partnerships and Delivery have been invited to present this item.

The Committee is recommended, having considered the report and responses to questions, to AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet arising therefrom.

Cllr Nathan Ley, Cabinet Member for Public Health, Inequalities and Community Safety, Robin Rogers, Programme Director, Partnerships and Delivery, and Paul Wilding, Programme Manager, Partnerships and Delivery presented an update report on the Council’s Cost of Living response.

Cllr Ley introduced the report, highlighting that the funding for the Council’s activities came not only from the £6.72m from central government’s Household Support Fund, but £2.8m also directly from the Council’s budget. The report introduced the national context, local issues, the rationale for the shape of support, spending to date, and issues encountered.

In response to the introduction, Committee members began raising a number of questions and observations, including:

-        The reasons for significant underspends, such as the Housing Benefit, which had accrued no committed expenditure out of a budget of £1.7m. It was confirmed this money would all be distributed at once and was due to be released the following month. Others, such as the Resident Support Scheme were currently underspent, but were new schemes. Take-up was growing significantly as awareness increased.

-        The degree of complexity involved in the multiple sources of support for both recipients and providers, and whether it would be effective to raise universal benefits instead.

-        The detail of the Council’s community wealth building activity and its role as an anchor institution. In response it was explained that the Council had engaged the Centre for Local Economic Studies to grow the Council’s ambition and action in relation to developing social value and community wealth building. At present, the Council was trying to find its place amidst the multiple other stakeholders and the transition of Local Economic Partnership powers into the Council. Anchor institutions were key local economic and social institutions, such as the councils, hospitals, universities and major employers who held significant influence over land ownership, employment and procurement practices. Several of these institutions were interested in finding ways to address inequality amongst their own staff, as well as more widely and the ambition was to coordinate these efforts and make best use of the levers available to different institutions to maximise the impact overall.

-        Given that poverty can be measured against many different headings, how the Council measured it was explored.  It was explained that the data being collated to create insight profiles would inform that measurement.  Much support that was being provided was crisis-level support rather than related specifically to a particular measure of poverty.  A dashboard was being created which would provide a granularity of data that had been hitherto unavailable.  Child poverty, food poverty, and transport poverty were suggested as key areas for the dashboard to show.  An all-member briefing on the dashboard would be welcomed by members.

-        It was suggested that the long-term financial challenges were such that the Council and other public sector organisations were needed to provide a secure framework for residents.  The importance of maintaining funding for this stream in future budgets was emphasised.

-        The expense of school uniforms was raised with an encouragement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47/23

At its meeting on 21 July 2023 the Committee considered a report providing an update on progress of the Business Services Transformation programme. The Committee requested an update report at the point Cabinet was asked to make a further decision regarding the programme.

Cllr Neil Fawcett, Cabinet Member for Community and Corporate Services, and Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, have been invited to attend and present this report.

The Committee is recommended, having considered the report and responses to questions, to AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet arising therefrom.

NB Members should be aware that they are being provided with the report being provided to Cabinet as the source material for their scrutiny. Following Scrutiny’s feedback during its previous consideration, the risk register is being provided. However, no additional Scrutiny-specific cover report has been requested.

Cllr Dan Levy, Cabinet member for Finance, introduced the report on the Business Services Transformation Programme Refocus which would be considered by Cabinet on 21 November 2023.  The Committee had requested an update on any action before Cabinet made any further decisions on the programme.

Cabinet was recommended to:

a.     Approve the refocusing of the programme on the delivery of improvements

to existing human resources (HR), finance, payroll and procurement

functions and processes.

b.      Approve that the programme does not progress the development of detailed

requirements and a full business case to review delivery options for

corporate support services and underpinning technology.

c.     Approve the repurposing £1.23m of the existing approved £1.57m

programme funding to deliver the refocused programme and return the

remaining £345k to the Transformation Reserve.

Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, also spoke to the report and explained the rationale for seeking approval for the proposal to refocus, deliver improvements to existing HR, finance, payroll and procurement functions and processes and remain with Hampshire County Council’s Integrated Business Centre (IBC).

In discussion with the Committee, the following points were raised:

-        The risk register being a qualitative risk register prevented being able to score risks which could lead to the misallocation of resources.

-        The majority of costs for implementing the applicant tracking system and the staffing for it were already included in the budget.  There is a potential reduction in costs from Hants as a result of the offboarding of that process.  

-        A separate recruitment package was being procured but the Council would continue to use most of the rest of the package with the hope of improvements.  The level of improvement necessary for the recruitment package to be attractive was such that it was not feasible to expect that in any timely fashion.

-        All but one of the partners were to remain and so the Council was not unusual in retaining it.

-        It was an upgrade rather than a new system and the Council had received assurances that the upgrade would be very limited and, as part of the partnership arrangement, the £250k contributed as part of the development work.  Any slight delay in the upgrade

-        A core programme team of six FTEs within ICT and within HR.  Work would be undertaken to assess.

Subject to the inclusion of a scored risk register, no observations or recommendations were made to Cabinet.

As the first step in its Budget Scrutiny the Committee is to be given an introduction to the broader budget-setting context, specifically in relation to the pressures and the Council’s approach to savings. Cllr Dan Levy, Cabinet Member for Finance, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Kathy Wilcox, Head of Financial Strategy have been invited to present this item.

The Committee is recommended, having considered the report and responses to questions, to AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet arising therefrom.

Cllr Dan Levy, Cabinet Member for Finance, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Kathy Wilcox, Head of Financial Strategy were joined by members of the Senior Leadership Team to present a report regarding the budget pressures faced by directorates and the Council’s approach to savings for 2024/25 – 2026/27.

Cllr Levy began by recognising the very significant pressures on the Council’s budget arising from external factors, particularly the rate of inflation and the expected rise in the National Living Wage. The severity of these pressures made decisions over prioritisation necessarily difficult.

Before allowing directors to introduce the pressures in their budgets, Kathy Wilcox, provided a number of important contextual details:

-        Without confirmation from central government that Council Tax rises could remain at the current level of 4.99% the budget had had to revert to the previous ceiling for its budgeting, of 1.99%. This worsened the Council’s financial position for 2025/26 by £7m.

-        Planned changes to directorate budgets of £30m were had already been confirmed in the previous budget, largely driven by inflation forecasts and demographic changes.

-        Directors had over the summer been asked to identify the budget pressures they were currently facing and explain plans around how to manage them within current budgets. The pressures put forward to the Committee represented those which could not be fully managed.

-        Pay inflation in 2023/24 was higher than expected than in the Council’s previous forecast, the balance of which was paid from contingency. The level of contingency was deemed to be in need of replenishing creating a pressure of £4m. Further, for 2024/25 an additional £2.4m would be required to cover pay inflation.

Karen Fuller, Corporate Director of Adults and Housing, introduced the Adults budget. A large directorate budget, the primary pressures arose from demographic pressures and population growth, and the effect of inflation on the cost of care packages provided by the Council. The Council’s approach was to implement the Oxfordshire Way, supporting individuals to receive care in their homes for as long as appropriate, which had done much to mitigate the challenges posed. The growth in the National Living Wage had a particular impact on adult social care costs. However, the Council had previously been generous to providers in terms of the inflationary uplifts provided, and conversations were to be held to decide whether, given this, scope existed not to continue with the same generosity. Equally, opportunities existed to support capacity development in the voluntary sector for those individuals who did not require statutory intervention to continue to live well in their communities.

Anny Coyle, Interim Director of Children’s Services, introduced her directorate with the support of Jean Kelly, Deputy Director of Children’s Social Care.. Children, Education and Families likewise held a large budget, covering multiple areas. Key pressures related to the increased investment in SEND provision following the recent inspection, and school improvement investments following the Education Commission. Elevated demand levels for social care, SEND services and Home to School Transport remained a pressure, compounded by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49/23

At its last meeting the Committee agreed to defer consideration of this item. To ensure consideration is focused on the most recent available data this report only includes the BMMR data from September. The November BMMR data will not have been published by the time of this meeting. Invited to present this item are Cllr Levy, Cabinet Member for Finance, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, Kathy Wilcox, Head of Financial Strategy, and Louise Tustian, Head of Insight and Corporate Programmes.

The Committee is recommended, having considered the report and responses to questions, to AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet arising therefrom.

Having been a Cabinet member during the period covered by the report under consideration Cllr Phillips withdrew from the meeting at the commencement of this item and did not return.

Cllr Levy, Cabinet Member for Finance, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Kathy Wilcox, Head of Financial Strategy, were joined by Louise Tustian, Head of Insight and Corporate Programmes to present the Council’s Business Management and Monitoring Report, detailing the Council’s position with regards to finance, performance and risk.

Louise Tustian introduced the key issues around performance and risk. Six measures in the report were rated red. However, new data was to be published to Cabinet imminently, which showed that treatment of highways and revenue variance across the Council had been upgraded to red and amber respectively. The Council’s strategic risks were in the forthcoming report to be updated; Major Infrastructure Capital Projects now referred specifically to HIF1 and HIF2, Demand Management for Adults and Children were to be elided into one measure and a specific risk around SEND added. Two further risks around Policy and Budget, and Delivering the Future Together were also to be added.

Kathy Wilcox presented the financial situation. An in-year directorate forecast overspend of £17.4m would in the following report be shown to have improved slightly to £13.6m. This largely came about due to agreements over contributions to health budgets. The major contributor to the overspend was the forecast £11m overspend in children’s services for care placements and home to school transport. Slower than anticipated reductions in agency spend were the primary cause of the £3m overspend in Resources as well as inflation costs for school meals. The overall overspend, once money from contingency and reserves was taken into account was £8.5m, or 1.5%. The deficit for funding High Needs once the High Needs Dedicated Schools Grant was taken into account was £18.3m. This deficit would increase the total High Needs Deficit to £59.4m at 31 March 2024. This negative balance would, as required, be held in an unusable reserve which would be due to come to an end on 31 March 2026. Members were reminded this was a material factor for them to hold in mind when considering the budget proposals. Previously planned savings were forecast to reach £17.8m (63%) were assessed as delivered or expected to be delivered, £4.4m (16%) as amber and 6m (21%) red. Of the savings planned but not delivered in the last financial year 4m (40%) were assessed as delivered or expected to be delivered in 2023/24 and 4.9m (48%) as red.

In response, members raised the following issues:

-        Whether the need to reach a balanced budget disincentivised making available savings, and thus were there savings to be made before having to make tradeoffs. Budgets were challenged as part of the budget setting process, and unjustified provisions were to be taken as savings. Any savings made would offset the same quantum of pressures and would therefore relive some of the pressure of reaching a balanced budget. It  ...  view the full minutes text for item 50/23