Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Corporate Director of Resources which provided details of the forecast outturn budget position for the Children and Young Peoples Services, highlighting major variances in comparison with the budget for the year, based on the position at the end of September (for copy see file of minutes).

The Children and Young People’s Finance Manager was in attendance to present the report and highlighted the major variances.

Councillor Walton complimented the report and was confident with the information provided.

Councillor Matin noted and welcomed the additional funding for Children and Young People’s Services. He commented that more people were realising the struggles across young people’s service areas. He went on to highlight underspends in some of the service areas and that an underspend was not utilising funds and suggested that resources should be spent to deal with the issues facing service areas.

Councillor Gunn commented that she was aware of the pressures on the service and pointed out that funding was provided to the service to ensure that services were the best they could offer. It was hugely important that these services were funded appropriately and cuts over the years to government funding made it difficult to manage these budgets. In terms of the pressures on the high needs block issues, this was a national issue and needed some context and had been going on for many years that could not be solved by individual local authorities, it needed national funding.

Resolved: That the report be noted.