(a)

the estimated revenue overspend at the end of the financial year was £1.746m (as at December 2014); the overall net spend equated to £206.426m against a budget of £204.680m which was a variance of 0.85%. This needed to be taken in the context of setting £16m of management and net transformation savings in 2014/15 on the back of balancing the 2013/14 revenue budget where £17.8m of net revenue reductions had been successfully delivered;

(b)

the key pressure points were still in Adult Social Care where, although client numbers were broadly in line with the set budget, the average cost per care package per client was significantly higher (which reflected the more complex needs of clients that the Council were supporting);

(c)

within the Children Social Care, the number of children placed with independent fostering agencies had increased by 11 to 83 which was above the budgeted target of 60; residential placements had increased by 4 to 28 against a target of 19 budgeted placement with a significant number of these placements being high cost due to the complex nature of these children’s needs;

(d)

there were a number of processes and strategies in place to address the rising numbers of children in care and escalated action to deliver further savings from the Council’s transformation programme were being worked up, in order to address the in-year forecasted overspend;

(e)

there had been an improvement of £1.957m since the previous quarter;

(f)

the latest Capital budget which covered 2014-18 was £210.154m which had been approved at Full Council on 24 November 2014; the revised Capital budget was £237.406m;

(g)

within the overall funding ‘envelope’ the approved Capital Programme of projects totalled £128.999m.

(h)

during the Budget Scrutiny process the Board had been advised that £500k of the £1m contingency fund had been used to reduce the overall variance; it was likely that the remaining £500k of the contingency fund would be used;

(i)

although the position as at the end of January 2015 had improved (£1.3m variance), it would be a challenge to balance the budget without the need to use monies from the working balance;

(j)

the number of interim appointments had now reduced from six to five;

(k)

it was difficult to categorise whether the stress related absence (13%) was work related as often individual’s home life had an impact on their working life;

(l)

an assurance was given that the following information would be provided -

?

a comparison of the types of absence in different organisations, including maintained schools, would be provided to the next meeting of the Board on 11 March 2015;

?

details of the estimated cost of ‘back filling’ posts by using agency staff, in order to cover for staff  absence;

?

on the number of occupational health referrals taking place and the length of time it was taking for staff to be referred;

(m)

the management development programme and the work place wellbeing charter would help to identity those members of staff who were suffering from stress; initiatives such as the Step Jockey Challenge helped with the physical health and wellbeing of staff;

(n)

the data from the Staff Survey was currently being analysed, in order to take the appropriate action.