Social services bailout required

Social Services in Powys still face a funding gap of just under £4 million this financial year despite councillors agreeing a bailout worth just over £3.1million.

At a Powys County Council meeting on Thursday, December 5, social services chiefs explained that they need more money to deal with the increasing demand for care packages for adults and the higher costs of placements for children in care.

Increasing costs in adult and children’s social care services is not unique to Powys and are having an impact on local authority budgets all across the UK.

In November, the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet had agreed that virement requests totalling £5.827 million would be recommended to full council – this would have covered the whole potential overspend.

However, the total request in front of councillors had dropped to £3.132 million.

The report explains that Adult Social Care is predicting that it will be £3.082 million over its budget of £92.688 million this year, while Children’s Social Services is expected to be £2.745 million over its budget of £30.745 million.

Plaid Cymru’s Cllr Gary Mitchell said he wanted to “run through a few of the figures,” that were in the report.

Cllr Mitchell said: “Can we clarify the recommendations; is the total figure we’re asking for virement at this point £4.392million or is it less?”

Director of corporate services and s151 officer, Jane Thomas said: “There are a lot of figures in the report, and I can understand some of the confusion.

“Council approved an additional £8.8million for Social Services when the budget was approved in March, so that has already been allocated and is expected to exceed that.

“With the delivery of savings and with that additional money there is still a projected overspend of £5.827 million.

“What the virement is proposing to do is to allocate £948,000 from a specific reserve and would clear that out and allocate the remaining revenue budget of £2.184 million which is held in the corporate risk budget.”

This risk budget is held within the main council’s base budget and is a mechanism used to try and not use the council’s financial reserves.

Ms Thomas said: “With those allocations this will leave those services with a projected overspend of £3.9million.

“We’re working to reduce and resolve that.

“Underspend from other services will have to contribute to the £3.9 million gap that remains to bring us back to a balanced budget.”

Unless this money is found from other departments – Ms Thomas explained that they council would then have to use some of its £50million reserves to balance the budget at the end of the year.

Ms Thomas “The virement does not allocate the complete amount and they will be holding that overspend to see where it goes over the next few months, with the pressure and demand it’s likely to go up.”

She warned that the financial pressure on Social Services would need to be addressed in the council’s next year’s budget.

Earlier, Conservative group leader Cllr Aled Davies raised concerns that the financial problems in Social Services are having a knock on effect on other council services.

Cllr Davies said: “I understand that highways have had instructions to only do essential maintenance or repairs, has that edict been sent across the whole of the council.”

Chief officer for place  Matt Perry confirmed  that a “notice” has been sent to all staff that only essential road maintenance is being done at the moment.

Eventually councillors went to a vote, and 53 councillors voted to approve the virement with four abstaining.