a.

the pressures within Children’s Services was a national problem and finances would become unquestionable which would result in cuts to public services to address this.  The Leader and Chief Executive recently met with the Minister regarding the scale of the problems in Plymouth;

b.

following the meeting with the Minster they were asked to help create appropriate scheme similar to the BELWIN Scheme.   BELWIN was an insurance type scheme to help local authorities primarily hit with a natural disaster that couldn’t predict and Government would step in and assist financially.  Officers have been tasked to look at a similar scheme with regard to the excessive costs in relation to the care packages outside of the norm then we could go to the Government with the evidence for extra financial support;

c.

over the last month extensive amount of work undertaken around the budget and have looked at every service on how we can be more efficient and hoped that over the next two weeks would have a definitive list that would improve the current position, drive out costs and maintain reserves and balances to an adequate and sustainable level;

d.

we share children’s functions with Torbay and at the last Cabinet meeting, Councillor Laing (Cabinet Member for Children and Young People) reported on the reconfiguration on Children’s Services to drive out costs at both Plymouth and Torbay;

e.

it was further reported that information requested should be made available to Councillors, however, it would be down to the Councillor requesting the information to chase this with the relevant Cabinet Member;

f.

following the meeting with the Ministers that there was a sense that Government recognised that there were issues around the growing pressures around children in care but were unsure on how to solve it.  It was further reported that there would be a comprehensive spending review before the summer and whether children services would get resolved as part of this review;

g.

it was unclear what grants would be received from Government and as a result were make a number of assumptions when looking at the budget for next year;

h.

there were unexpected costs for the clean-up of Mount Batten Beach., however, we do have contingencies for unexpected events but ultimately this would put pressure if something else happened;

i.

they have to balance the books and would like to give assurances that they do not go below the working balance of 5% but cannot promise what was beyond their control. They were looking to replace the deficit over the next three years. They wanted to assure the Committee that they were working hard to balance the books.