WBC Bursar Briefing January 2016
Wednesday 13th January, Council Chamber, Shute End
Chair: Donna Munday Minutes: Katherine Vernon
Action1 / Welcome and introductions – Donna Munday
Jenny Sumner – Loddon Primary
Poonam Bhardwaj - Piggott
Claire Payne - South Lake
Vandana Bloomfield – Schools Finance Team
2 / Budget Review – Donna Munday
Presentation
DSG 18th DEC = cash flat
MFG continuing
PP = protected at current rates £1,320 primary FSMever6, £935 secondary FSMever6, LAC £1,900, Post LAC £1,900, Service child ever6 (changed from ever 4) £300
UIFSM – continuing at current rates
DFE Consultation in Spring – National Funding Formula, must happen in 2017/18 – New consultation – PLEASE respond
Sep 17 Early Years free entitlement hours increasing from 15hrs to 30hrs for 3-4 year olds
Read Autumn statement not speech
Financial efficiency tool - doesn’t apply to infants and data = 13/14
Problem = DSG cash flat but costs rising
Income generation – Wrap Around Care, After School Club. Historically the income from breakfast and ASC should cover costs and not incur a surplus. But going forward you can reinvest any surplus into your school.
Lettings – charge commercial letting rate
Community use – scouts, WI etc
Sponsorship – eg a bank. Summer fair, match funding. Estate agents boards
EY – 30hrs for parents working >16hrs and earning <£100k
2 year olds still 15 hours. Though may increase in future years?
www.easyfundraising.org.uk
Update/upgrade websites, attract new pupils (pupil numbers = DSG) Marketing
Savings not cuts
Collaboration
Invest to save - Recruitment of teachers is an issue - Government taking steps. Share a member of staff with another school?
Stats
80%-85% total staff of DSG (sustainability)
Of which 54% = teaching staff (not incl LSA or TA) CFR E01 and E02 and include on costs
Use carry forward as a one-off, NOT to use for staff costs, otherwise unsustainable
Schools Forum decision to clawback any carry forwards
Support
Budget monitoring in by Jan 29th, Schools Finance Team to respond to schools by February half term
Attendance at governor meeting/training
Key dates
29th JAN final SB budget (based on Oct 2015 census)
End Feb = EY indicative (based on Jan 21st 2016 census)
Pupil Premium (based on Jan 2016 census)
End March all final budgets, High Needs, Early Years etc
By end of April schools will know their year-end position
Beginning May = budget plans to WBC
Comment from Highwood - Need help from Procurement for better contracts.
Comment from Hawthorns - Need our voice to be heard by government
Comment from Westende - Model of federated schools? School improvement officer. Something to work towards. DM to take to SIOs / DM
3 / Impact of the December Settlement – Rob Stubbs
Presentation
WBC RSG cut by more than double compared to the rest of the LAs in Berkshire
WBC income 70% from council tax 20% from government
Council Tax likely to increase by 4%, to be decided on 18th Feb by members. Over 2% increase = referendum (2% has to be spent on Adult Social Care = £1.6m)
4 / Traded Services – Kien Lac and Dawn Ray
Presentation
To help with 20% of budget that in turn could help with staff (80%)
New central contact number, email and website. Can still use old contacts and numbers.
www.SELECTBUSINESSSERVICES.co.uk
Website still being updated, anticipated to be ready by beginning of February 2016
Paper copies of new brochures given out at today’s meeting
Brochures = Blue for schools
Order by 29th Feb. Heads emailed 12/01/16
A lot of services are now Pay As You Go, so that you can buy into a service at any time of year
Kien can email out pdfs before website go live if required.
Highwood – survey of what big contracts schools buy. E.g. School supply insurance, Photocopying. Schools not told about discounts that WBC already have. Lack of awareness and communication.
Kien - Central account management function to come.
Rivermead – central team to look at best value and contracts instead of each individual school doing it. To save time, so can spend more time on generating income etc.
Hawthorns - Phase 2 when? Eg Wiser, payroll. Kien – best part of a year.
5 / Schools Finance Update – Liz Goddard
Welcome to Vandana Bloomfield, a new member of Schools Finance Team. Vandana is the new finance contact for the Earley Cluster, but Kay still here to help with continuity.
WBC training dates (free for new bursars who’ve bought a new bursar package, and existing bursars who have support package and would like a refresher, but charge for new bursars if not bought into a package):-
Budget Planning - Monday 1st February 2016 – 9:30 – 11:30
Closedown - Wednesday 24th February 2016 – 9:30 – 11:30
External courses
SIMS FMS End of Year training course - 4th March 2016
Free Selima workshop - Wednesday 3rd February 2016, Council Chamber. Diane emailed latest details on this (Monday 11th January) - the Session for newer staff will be 9:00 to 12:00 and the session for more experienced staff will be 13:00 to 16:00.
Our next Finance Surgery is - Tuesday 19th January 2016 13:00 to 15:00. You can just come in without booking an appointment but it would help us if we know in advance you’ll be coming and what the issue is so we can be prepared with the right people and the right information to resolve your issue
The next Payroll User Group is Thursday 4th February, 9:30 -10:30
SFVS training session – to be run by Donna on the 27/1/16 at 7pm if anyone would like to come as a refresher – noting that there are two new questions in this year’s SFVS
Bursar Conference booked for 16th June 2016 – Coppid Beech. Please email Donna with any requests for workshops.
December Budget monitoring – deadline is Friday 29th January, but as early as possible please. As always please contact us if you are having any difficulties, rather than overwriting formulae etc! (NB – a forecast surplus will show as a NEGATIVE and a deficit will be a POSITIVE number)
Important dates –
31 January schools block budget distributed
29 February – indicative EY
31 March – HN, EY, PRU, Academies
3 May – budget plans
29 February - Traded services must be booked
Please be aware of your deadlines for year-end (See Donna’s email of 23rd November)
Timetable – brought forward to enable us to come back to you with any queries before you break up for Easter. In future we will be closing in February with March estimates.
WISER Reports – sometimes a discrepancy between transactions and YTD totals – due to transactions being posted very late. If you see a transaction detailed, do add it to FMS, the total will reconcile next month.
Imprest balances - Please keep careful watch on your imprest balance and avoid going overdrawn. If you have an emergency situation and cannot avoid going overdrawn, then please forewarn Lianne Wright to give her a chance to deal with it. At one point, just before Christmas schools imprest accounts were £60k overdrawn in total, giving Lianne a very difficult job.
Imprest claims – if you have a variance when reconciling your claim, please do not try and “lose” it (eg by putting in on the “net credit return” or “returns not reimbursed” or “petty cash balance” lines) but leave it showing as a variance, so we can clearly see it. A variance does NOT mean we will automatically reject the claim or report it to audit, as long as there is an explanation in your accompanying email to say what the variance is, or that it is being investigated. If the variance is a historic issue which you cannot track down, please contact us to discuss and we can agree the best approach – in some cases, this may be to write off the variance which will probably need assistance from Capita. (We will help liaise with Capita if that is a problem).
If you have any variances, please make it a priority firstly to disclose them, and then to resolve them in January and February to avoid problems with audit at year end. Please contact us if you need any help.
Mileage claims – a query has arisen re paying mileage claims to staff. The rate is at the school’s discretion, but please be aware that if you pay more than the HMRC approved rate of 45p a mile, then payments would need to be declared on a form P11D (year-end return re employee benefits submitted to HMRC)
HR Support – following a query raised at the last briefing re LA HR support in situations where schools use an external HR provider and find they are having to deal with staff redundancies. The response from Nicky Barlow which was forwarded to schools in November was as follows:- If a school is obtaining their HR support from an external provider we will have very little part in the process. The school will be expected to obtain advice from the provider on planning communications, conducting consultation with the unions and staff, preparation of redundancy and pension estimates, considering any feedback from the consultation, selection criteria representation and dismissal meetings.
All schools looking to make redundancies and seeking LA funding for compensation costs need to liaise with Donna. Where it is a school we provide HR service to we will liaise with Donna, but if the school obtains HR advice elsewhere we will not do that.
Where schools have an external HR provider we will attend any redundancy appeal hearings and supply union addresses, but other than that we will have no involvement.
Schools Discussion Forum – Please use it! If you go onto the page and ‘Subscribe’ at the bottom then you will receive an alert when a new posting is put up so you don’t need to keep looking at it unless you see a topic you’re interested in.
If you’re sending an email into the helpdesk re a very “general” issue and are just asking us to distribute it to all bursars, please do consider whether it’s something that could more usefully be posted on the forum.
http://wsh.wokingham.gov.uk/login/?returnurl=%2fleadership%2ffinance%2fsfforum%2f
6 / Selima Payroll Update – Adam Jones
3rd Feb Training course. Absence reporting will be added to agenda.
Problem with maternity costings. Some going to school, some going to council. Selima are looking into issue with Employee Services and is currently being worked on. Selima will have a response for schools by the end of week.
Question – Pension scheme re-enrolment after 3 years – communication will be sent out to employees
Maternity – Teachers and Support staff statutory maternity pay gets picked up by WBC.
Supply cover for maternity (de-delegated) for teachers only.
Issues with who pension company believe they have in and who Selima think are in. Selima liaising with pension companies. Timescales on 4th Feb – payroll contract meeting. Full audit will be carried out. Recruiting a person to the role. Selima will do it, or schools can do it individually and let Selima know.
Walter Infants - LGPS annual pension statements on website. Wokingham not on there - computer glitch.
7 / Energy – Ian Gough
Please contact him with any queries,
Phone 0118 974 6714
8 / AOB
Procurement card payment date changed for all schools.
Can schools get to account on line? Can if change to a different scheme? Some schools can get on-line.
Let schools know about excel and word courses. / DM
SFH
9 / Optional Session – Diane Aldrich
Presentation
- 1 -