Issue - meetings

[To receive a report on the Draft Budget and Medium Term Financial Strategy 2019-2020]. 

The Portfolio Holder for Public Health and Wellbeing introduced a report on the Draft Budget and Medium Term Financial Strategy 2019-2020.  She stated it was a challenging year for the Council, in setting the budget for 2019-2020.  The projected budget deficit for 2019-2020 was in the region of £6 million.  There would be an update provided on the deficit in January next year.  The report before the Scrutiny Panel asked them to provide feedback to Scrutiny Board on the draft budget proposals and on the overall scrutiny process of the budget. 

The Portfolio Holder stated that the Council had identified a total of £695,000 budget reduction and income generation proposals, which were being formally consulted on.  Within Public Health there was a saving of £288,000 to be delivered through the integration of Public Health Service Contracts.  She asked for the Panel’s feedback on the Draft Budget and Medium Term Financial Strategy and for feedback on the overall scrutiny process.  It was intended for the Scrutiny Panels responses to be provided to Scrutiny Board on 11 December. 

The Chief Accountant stated that some of the savings were being made through budget efficiencies which did not require consultation, as they did not impact directly on service users.  As an example she cited the use of one off grants and vacancy management. The appendix to the report detailed the savings where there would be an impact on the public.    

A Member of the Panel commented that her perception had been that there had not been the same amount of publicity for the budget consultation events as in previous years.  The Chief Accountant responded that they had advertised in the same way as previous years.  The consultation process was still open and would close in December. 

A Member of the Panel stated the Secretary of State for Health had given a speech recently about the importance of prevention in the health sector.  He asked if there had been any communications from the Department for Health since the speech.  The Portfolio Holder responded that there had not been any direct communication from the Department for Health.  There were however local discussions taking place about how to work better collaboratively with partners on the preventive health agenda. 

The Director of Strategy and Transformation of the CCG asked if an impact analysis was being carried out on any proposed savings.  The Director for Public Health responded that on the subject of the Integrated Health Public Service contracts, there were historically a number of mandatory functions the Council had to undertake.  These included several commissioned services, such as goods and alcohol, the healthy childhood programme, which incorporated childhood measurement and health visiting services and finally sexual health services.  Traditionally the Council used procurement and tendering processes to achieve the best value for money against the outcomes they wanted to achieve for the people of Wolverhampton. 

The Director for Public Health stated that the health and social care environment was changing with many shared goals and shared outcomes, which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6