Agenda item

To receive a report from the Supporting People Team Manager, (copy enclosed) which details the three year Commissioning Plan for the Supporting People Programme in Denbighshire.

                                                                                             9.35 a.m.

 

A copy of a report by the Commissioning and Tendering Officer (CTO), which detailed the three year Commissioning Plan for the Supporting People Programme (CPSPP) in Denbighshire, had been circulated with the papers for the meeting.

 

The Head of Community Support Services (HCSS) introduced the report and informed the Committee that the Council was planning towards a 10% cut in the Supporting People grant from the Welsh Government (WG) for 2016-17.  As the actual amount of grant funding would not be announced until late November this year the Council also had contingencies in place in case the actual funding cut exceeded 10%.  It was confirmed by the Commissioning and Tendering Officer (CTO) that the LCP would be submitted to the North Wales Supporting People Regional Collaborative Committee in January, 2016, to inform the development of the North Wales Regional Commissioning Plan. 

 

The report outlined the current position, cost and effect on other services, the findings of the Equality Impact Assessment completed for the LCP in 2013, details of consultations carried out and    risks and steps introduced to reduce them.

 

The Committee considered Appendix 1 to the report, and it was agreed that the meeting move to PART II.

 

PART II

 

exclusion of press and public

 

RESOLVED – that under Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972, the Press and Public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraphs 14 and 15 of Part 4 of  Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.

 

Responding to  members’ questions on the proposals under consideration for cutting SP grants to individual organisations, listed in Appendix 1 to the report, officers confirmed that:-

 

·                 the criteria for SP grant funding was very prescriptive and therefore detailed work had been undertaken to ensure that the funding provided was being used by each organisation for its intended purpose, and that it conformed with the SP criteria;

·                 As part of the rationalisation of grant funding processes, duplication of provision, compliance with grant conditions and whether the projects are supportive of the early intervention agenda will all been examined in detail.  The contract monitoring processes administered by SP ensure that organisations are not receiving money for the same projects from different funding streams;

·                 other public bodies, such as the Health Board were also looking at rationalising their processes and pooling their funding streams;

·                 part of the tender process for applying to deliver services  on the Council’s behalf included strict financial checks on the organisations that applied;

·                 once a contract was awarded its delivery would be regularly monitored to ensure it was delivering the objectives in line with the contract specification, part of which included a value for money analysis to ensure that it delivered services that added value to Denbighshire residents’ lives;

·                 the SP Grant was not usually an organisation’s only source of funding, as SP grant funding was allocated for specific purposes;

·                 officers served on a number of different groups within the Council and with partner organisation i.e. Health Board and were therefore able to form collective views and decisions on funding requests;

·                 a single pathway referral system operated which helped the Council determine whether individuals who applied to access its services were receiving similar support from other organisations. Plans were in place to ensure that this was fully integrated with the Community Support Services Single Point of Access (SPoA);

·                 Supporting People had rationalised the contracts it held with individual organisations, whereas in the past an organisation may have had multiple contracts with Supporting People for the delivery of services, it would now have one overarching contract with each individual element of the contract monitored as part of the contract monitoring process.

 

Members emphasised the general need for central government to simplify the grant funding system to make it easier to understand and less confusing and complex for Local Authorities (LAs) and the public in general.  Such an approach would assist valuable resources to be used far more wisely and therefore maximise their impact for the taxpayer. 

 

The Chief Executive (CE) referred to the Scottish approach where only two grants were now distributed by the Scottish Government, the remainder had been incorporated into the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) awarded to each LA.  This approach assisted LAs with their financial planning as very few elements of their budgets would be dependent on the awarding of standalone grants for specific Council functions.  The Welsh Local Government Association’s (WLGA) Director of Resources had recently attend a Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting to discuss this approach and its benefits for LAs.  The CE suggested that members may wish to discuss this aspect further at a future Budget workshop session.

 

Members requested that the report to Cabinet:-

 

- include a column in Appendix 1 highlighting whether the SP Grant monies were an organisation’s only source of income;

- information on the anticipated impact on each organisation of the potential cut in their SP grant funding;

- identify those organisations which had been subject to cuts in previous years

 

The meeting resumed to PART I at this juncture.

 

PART I

 

At the conclusion of the discussion the Committee:-

 

RESOLVED – that, subject to the inclusion of the above observations and amendments, the report be referred to Cabinet for consideration in due course.