Issue - meetings

The Executive Member for Children’s Services submitted a report for Executive’s consideration.

The report presented the revised plans to achieve savings of £0.450m in 2025/26 and £0.615m in 2026/27, totalling £1.065m by the end of the current MTFP period on 31 March 2027 (reference: 24/25 CC03).

Further, it was anticipated that a further saving of £0.850m would be achievable in 2027/28 which was beyond the current MTFP period. This plan aimed to deliver a total saving of £1.915m over a 4-year period, replacing the original saving of £1.848m that was incorporated into the 2023/24 budget to deliver £0.787m in 23/24 and £1.061m in 2024/25 which had been determined to be undeliverable as originally planned. Due to the operational activity being brought online during 2024/25 the savings will be realised from 2025/26.

The Children’s Services Financial Improvement plan approved in February 2023 included elements of increasing the in-house estate for Children’s care. During the course of the 12 months significant efforts were made to identify suitable properties to bring online. These efforts were hampered for two key reasons:

1.    At the commencement of the year significant time was spent exploring a large property which could have met the needs of our 16+ cohort. Months exploring this including the refurbishment feasibility were undertaken, however it transpired there were issues with the refurbishment and build that had already been undertaken which would have left a legal liability on the local authority to resolve. The focus on this area led to a delay in project achievements.

2.    The cost of refurbishment, when seeking to convert any existing council asset to a residential home were prohibitive and did not represent value for money. This had therefore led to a strategy for future consideration being the identification of suitable properties with minimal renovation work required.

Under the revised plan, Middlesbrough Council would reduce the use of the external high-cost placements and grow the residential and supported accommodation offer, by increasing Middlesbrough Council’s in house offer and building partnerships with commissioned providers.

Middlesbrough Council’s residential and supported accommodation occupancy was mainly high (residential homes 95% in January 2024, supported accommodation 100% and higher needs supported lodgings 78%), which meant that Middlesbrough Council could not place any more children in their own lower costing, higher quality residential and supported accommodation placements.

Instead, Middlesbrough Council were using external organisations to provide homes for Middlesbrough children and young people, which on average, comes at a higher cost than Children’s Services provides. On average, Middlesbrough Council residential homes cost £3,300 per week to operate, and on average currently the average cost of an external residential children’s home placement was £5,600 per week.

Middlesbrough Council had forecast that the current active 76 external residential placements for children with a total forecast cost of £14.4m for 2023/24 (after contributions from Health and Education as of December 2023).

The Executive Member for Children’s Services thanked officers for their involvement in the creation of the report.

ORDERED that Executive approve the revised approach which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 78