Schools are sorting finances, says senior councillor

Fears that local school budgets are “falling off a cliff” edge have been soothed.

Powys County Council schools are supposed to hand in their budgets to the education service on May 1.

In June 2019, the school budgets were predicted to be in a total deficit of £4.9million for the 2020/21 financial year, and £9.2million in 2021/22.

Then, the PCC Cabinet had to approve deficit budgets for nearly a third of all schools in Powys with 27 of the 93 schools unable to produce a balanced budget.

To address the situation, teams from the education and finance departments were sent in to schools to come up with repayment plans that could be agree with governors and headteachers.

At a meeting of the Finance Panel, Cllr John Morris said: “The projection going forward looks as if school budgets are falling off a cliff, there does not seem to be an upturn at all.

“We brought in a funding formula for 2019/20 and the objective of that was to make sure all schools can balance their budgets.

“Now, that hasn’t worked, would you agree that the funding formula for 19/20 has failed?”

Finance Portfolio holder, Cllr Aled Davies replied: “No. We are currently funding our existing school structure, the figures do not reflect the budget settlement that has just been agreed, that is a snapshot of how it was last June.”

Cllr Morris, added: “What confidence do we have that governing bodies will take action and that notices of concern and warnings are being acted upon?”

Head of Finance, Jane Thomas, answered: “I’m heavily involved in meetings with schools around those notices.

”I know that 100 per-cent of governing bodies are now working with the authority to address some of the long time deficits that we have seen in some of our schools.

“We know that it’s a work in progress, but our discussions with schools show they are in a better place to balance their funding and have clear recovery plans.

“I won’t say it will cover all of the deficits because some are long standing and some are so significant they won’t be covered in one or two years, they will be longer term plans for those schools.”

In March/ PCC as part of the budget settlement  gave an extra £6million to the schools and education service taking it up to £98.6million for 2020/21.

 

Photo: Cllr Aled Davies

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service