Hertfordshire County Council facing 'real issues' despite additional funding

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Herts County Council has “welcomed” the additional funding from the Chancellor’s autumn budget but adds it “has still exhausted all options open to it to help protect services” as it laid out aims of its Integrated Plan.

Each year, the council refreshes its Integrated Plan, setting the funding across services for the following year. Some highlights this year include £30 million for adult care providers, £26 million to support elderly residents, a new supported living programme, £28 million to support looked-after children and children with disabilities, and £100 million in highways maintenance next year.

The Public Health grant for internal commissioning of services, which is issued separately by the Department for Health and Social Care, is also expected to increase by £500,000 annually over the years from 2025/26 to 2028/9, rising from £9.4 million to 9.9 million, with an additional £1 million one-off contribution in 2025/26.

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Herts County Council says this year’s budget has been affected by longstanding challenges, including huge demand on adult and children’s social care services, an ageing population, complex needs of service users and the effect of cuts made since 2010.

Hertfordshire County CouncilHertfordshire County Council
Hertfordshire County Council

The local authority adds that its Integrated Plan has also been negatively affected by some aspects of the Chancellor’s budget, including ‘significant’ increases in National Living Wage and employers’ National Insurance contributions, however these costs “were offset in part by an increase in funding and a promise to meet directly-employed pay costs of the National Insurance changes”.

The council has also benefited from additional grant funding for social care, while the Council Tax referendum limit remains at 4.99 per cent, including a two per cent adult social care precept.

The council stated: “It is also clear that the Government expects councils to increase council tax by the maximum, and adjusts grant allocations to reflect this.

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“Overall, the settlement will on average achieve a six per cent increase in core spending power across the sector, but there is considerable variance across regions and types of authority. This is also before any allocations of Extender Provider Responsibility funding and funding for National Insurance employer contributions.

“In financial terms, the additional funding has been welcomed, but the Council has still exhausted all options open to it to help protect services.”

At a meeting of the council’s public health and community safety committee on Thursday (30 January) the Integrated Plan and its funding allocations for areas in health and social care were discussed by councillors.

Sarah Perman, director of public health, said: “As members will know, public health is funded entirely by a ring-fenced grant and some supplementary grants from the Department of Health and Social Care. That grant can only be spent on specific public health outcomes. So, the way we’re involved in the IP process, and we’re fully involved, is slightly different from most other parts of the council.

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“Two things I want to highlight is the continued uncertainty around the value of the public health grant from one year to the next. Sitting here, myself and my leadership team still don’t know what grant we will get on 1 April. That is typical but we are looking forward to the promise of multi-year budgets as part of the reset of local government finances, and we hope that we will get an increase next year, albeit that we are predicting a conservative increase of around one per cent.

“That does create real issues for us, obviously we’re at the end of our planning process and we need to let our big contracts, our commissioning services, know the value of their budget for future years. So, just to highlight the impact that has, that continued uncertainty.

“The other area to highlight is the significant pressure on the public health budget, like the rest of the council. That comes about mainly through the pressures on our providers, through the changes in national insurance, increases in pay awards, the impact of inflation, and we do what we can to cover those increases and make sure that our services are still meeting their core requirements and we are financially sustainable.”

Following the development of the Integrated Plan, the council has laid out the following strategic aims:

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Adult Care Services • £30m to ensure adult care providers can continue to support residents, including an uplift to care worker pay • £26m to ensure we can meet the need of the increasing number of older people and adults with disabilities who need our support • Launch of new supported living programme • A new Carers Hub to help support carers access support • Further investment in Domestic Abuse One Stop Shop to enhance support for people at medium and standard risk Children’s Services • £28m investment to support Children Looked After and children with disabilities • £1.7m increasing fostering allowances and extending intensive foster carer project • £8m Capital investment for a third phase of the Transformation programme to deliver a further 17 beds of in county Residential provision • Making permanent the Family Safeguarding (for children in care) approach to helping children in care return home

SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) • Further £2.8m (rising to £4.6m in year 2) investment into SEND to help support our improvement journey (on top of the £7m from the last budget) • £3.6m to meet costs of transporting SEN pupils to school • Capital support for SEND place strategy, including additional grant funding • Covering interest costs on the High Needs Block (HNB) deficit Highways and Place • Investing £100m in highways maintenance next year, including £4m additional capital highways maintenance (supported by Government grant) and £3m additional capital preventative maintenance (following acceleration of delivery of existing 2-year programme) • Flooding – investment to improve flood protection & investigations & ensure planning applications reduce flood risks for the future • £3m to manage the increase in the cost and demand of waste services Public Health – 3-year Prevention and Health Inequalities Fund • £3.4m will be for transformational large-scale projects that support residents to stay well and healthy, reduce demand for public services, and address health inequalities in Hertfordshire.

Discussing the report, Councillor Sandy Walkington said: “I do poke away about the cross funding of other council activities from the public health budget, and that fact that we have contributed more over the years.

“I’d be very interested if we could be told, maybe not now but in written form afterwards, what this extra £500,000 is funding and why miraculously, we’ve now decided there are these other activities the council does which are classed as delivering the public health objectives? Obviously I understand things like the health walks programme, the rights of way and so on, I do know there are some thoroughly brilliant things done.

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“I fully understand the impossibility of not knowing what your budget is going to be. So I guess all these figures to a degree are a work of fiction. Until we know-”

Chairman, Councillor Morris Bright then intervened and said: “I’m calling foul, I’m calling foul. It’s a draft. We don’t use works of fiction.”

Councillor Walkington then used the word “estimate”, and went on to point to cuts made in sexual health and health improvement services, adding: “The numbers are actually down from this year’s budget and then flat going forward…”

Ms Perman responded: “Just to reassure members going forward, for every pound that we do spend through these internal commissioning arrangements, we match that every carefully against something that we are certain does contribute to public health outcomes.

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“You mention, Councillor Walkington, some of the examples, but we also invest in, for example, family centres, particularly in early help preventative services. What’s quite interesting to me looking around the country is that there are some things that we support in this way financially, that might be directly commissioned by the public health team in another local authority. So, there’s a range of ways that this is done.

“We did conduct a value for money review of our internal commissioning arrangements last year, so that we do have that assurance that we are spending that money wisely. We are now updating the list of what we fund because of this additional £500,000 but we’d certainly be very happy to provide you with a list of what that funding is used for.”

Regarding sexual health, Ms Perman said there was “a lot of out of area spending”, which “creates increases and decreases” from one year to the next, with “some underspend reported in the sexual health budget in recent years”.

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