New information on budget negotiations from Councillor Freeman

This further information has been passed to Councillor George Freeman on Supporting People (SP) funding relating to the Floor. (Ed: The Floor is a mechanism that smooths the degree of loss of Councils who, for whatever reason, would otherwise suffer an unsupportable negative.)

The information relating to Argyll & Bute extracted from a spreadsheet the Councillor has now been given for all local authorities. It lists Argyll and Bute as follows:

2010/11 Supporting People: £11.695 million
2011/12 Supporting People: £6.107 million
% change: 47.78%
Impact of minus 4.5% Floor: £5.062 million
2011/12 Supporting People with Floor: £11.169 million
Year-on-year change with Floor: less £0.526 million
Year-on-year change with Floor: less 4.5%
Change from actual 2011/12 figures: £5.062 million
Change from actual 2011/12 figures: 82.88%

On the list of all local authorities, based on the same 4.5% Floor calculation, the worst affected Council would be Glasgow City at a loss of £3.395 million (4.5%) with the biggest gainers being Falkirk, with a gain of £2.263 million (25.96%), Dundee at £2.214 million (19.19%) and Aberdeen City at £1.144 million (10.06%).

Councillor Freeman can confirm that amongst the additional information he now has is an email from the Scottish Government’s Local Government – Finance Division at Victoria Quay to a colleague dated 22 December 2010 in which it is stated:

‘There has been considerable interest and movement in the former ring-fenced Supporting People funding – the explanation I was given by the policy area was as follows:

‘Supporting People – this was a former ring-fenced grant and the needs-based indicators have not been updated since 2003-04 this has resulted in considerable swings in funding.  The calculations have been checked and found to be accurate. As agreed by COSLA all the needs-based indicators for all the former ring-fenced grants were updated.

‘The methodology was as follows:

30% by over 65 population
20% by disability allowance recipients
30% by three year average of homelessness applications, and
20% by population in lowest 15% of data zones in SIMD.

‘If COSLA want to reconsider the distribution of these resources as part of the consultation process then we would be happy to consider that with them, but the request would have to come through COSLA and any changes to the distribution mechanism agreed with them‘.

Councillor Freeman notes that the Scottish Government has confirmed that they would be happy to reconsider the distribution but the request would have to come from COSLA.  It is also now clear that ‘the future funding of the former ring-fenced grants was discussed as part of the joint review of distribution which the Scottish Government undertook with COSLA last year (2009) and it was recommended that they should remain rolled up, but that the indicators used to distribute the funding should be updated’.  He points out that it is now clear that COSLA have been involved in these discussions for at least 18 months.

The Councillor is hoping that, as he suggested today, we will now see the introduction of mitigation retrospectively based on a 4.5% Floor although he feels that  it is difficult to see how other councils would want to sign up to that, due to the potential ‘losses’ some would see when comparing the first spreadsheet on SP against the one he has received tonight (27th January 20-11).