Response from Cllr Ken Thornber on budget cuts for the sector

This is Cllr Thornbers response to letter which may be found here

21 February 2007 

Dear Mr Riley

CHILDREN'S SERVICES BUDGET

Thank you for your letter dated 8 February 2007 and I am somewhat concerned about its contents.

I am not sure why our budget papers have taken time to come to your notice and would ask you to let me know how budget papers are normally revealed to you and what might have happened in this context.

The budget for Hampshire County Council, and to which you refer in the body of your letter, has been under severe funding pressures for many years now. The context to our funding is that we receive £96 per head of population funding from the Government, while the average for County Councils in the land is £160 per head with one County Council in the north receiving 3 times as much as we receive per head of population. Inevitably funding at these low levels has had an impact over the years and this has reached a point where in the current year's budget and next year's budgets, we have no alternative but to reduce our services. This year we received 2.7% grant increase from Government when the retail price index is running at 4.2% per annum, and yet we have to cap our increase in council tax at below 5%. In effect the Government is squeezing its own grant to us and squeezing the amount which council tax payers might be only too prepared to absorb. The consequence of this is that services have to be reduced.

So far as Children's Services are concerned, and this is the Education Authority and children's social services, we have, in the very small revenue support grant from government, nevertheless given those services some growth this year of £1.2 million. The problem however is that the current budget for children's services is heading for an overspend of £2.8 million by the end of March 2007 and this is largely due to increased numbers of children with complex needs, the need for external fostering agencies to take care of some of these children with complex needs, and indeed also an increase in home to school transport in transporting children with special needs from their home to their school.

Since, we cannot ask the council tax payer for more, and we have to balance our books, we have no course but to resort to savings in our current and next year's budget.

I now turn to the specific comment you make about discrimination against the voluntary sector and the impact on the activities of many voluntary organisations

We have withdrawn from what is known as community education, a sum of £300,000, and it is this sum that has been used to help the organisations you refer to in the past. The sum of £300,000 will now be used to assist children with complex difficulties and home to school transport. It is also the case that the Government has made available, within its dedicated school grant, sums of money for what is known as community cohesion and which is Whitehall speak for assistance to voluntary organisations. My Director of Children's Services is quite clear that the dedicated school grant has benefited from sums of money which are intended to be used by schools in helping voluntary organisations within their area use the facilities of that school.

It is also the case that the schools of Hampshire presently have balances of £36 million.

We, as an Education Authority and as a County Council, no longer have executive responsibility for our schools. Such authority is vested in the Head and their Board of Governors and in these circumstances I hope and think that you will understand our difficulties, and yet accept that schools have been receiving handsome increases over the years and that the schools have some obligation to their communities. This obligation is now enshrined within the Education Act of 2006.

Yours sincerely

Ken Thornber
Leader