To provide an opportunity to pose questions to Cabinet Members in line with Standing Orders.
Process:
No more than 10 minutes will be allocated at the Council meeting for questions to each Cabinet Member.
Members must submit their proposed questions in writing in advance in accordance with Standing Orders. If members are unable to ask their question orally within the allocated time, remaining questions will be answered in writing. The question and response will be appended to the minutes.
The question must be addressed through the Mayor or the person presiding at the meeting and not directly to the person being questioned.
Questions will be posed to Cabinet Members in the following order:
i. Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Assets and Member Development
ii. Cabinet Member for Education and Skills
iii. Cabinet Member for Social Services
iv. Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Housing
v. Cabinet Member for Community and Resources
vi. Cabinet Member for Streetscene
vii. Cabinet Member for Licensing and Regulation
viii. Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure
For information: A digest of recent decision schedules issued by Cabinet, Cabinet Members and Minutes of recent meetings of Committees has been circulated electronically to all Members of the Council.
Minutes:
i. Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for City Services
Councillor Mogford asked the following question that had been submitted:
‘Will the Cabinet member give an update on how the City has coped with recent flooding throughout Newport and importantly what initiatives and preventive measures should be taken so going forward we are less adversely impacted by storms of these magnitudes.’
The Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for City Services responded:
City Services staff worked on a shift rotation from Friday afternoon until the Monday morning carrying out preventative action and responding to requests for support. Over 120 separate incidents where dealt with, mainly consisting of:
Sandbag requests (over 1,000 residents were supplied with sandbags)
Blocked gullies
Traffic signal failing (due to water ingress)
Falling Trees
Three roads were closed for a short period of time: A48 Penhow, Coast Road Marshfield and Cardiff Road near Pont Ebbw.
Flood defences were deployed where required including the closing of Gwastad Gate at Malpas Brook. Following the event, river bridges and critical culverts have been inspected and there are no immediate structural concerns, but officers are also working with NRW to address any debris accumulating at river bridges.
To address flooding at the Redrow site, the developer plans plan to install additional, temporary flood defences to protect the development; a meeting with Council officers is being arranged to explore permanent solutions.
Welsh Government has also set up a number of funds for financial assistance:
Support for councils – through the Emergency Financial Assistance Scheme
Support for households – support for those affected by flooding is to be provided via Emergency Assistance Payments.
Support for businesses – Business Wales are offering advice and support companies affected and they will refer them to the Development Bank for Wales if they need loans.
Significant flood defence works have already been carried out in Shaftesbury, and officers are currently working with NRW to develop plans for further flood mitigation works at Stephenson Street. The Council is committed to working in partnership with NRW and WG to review and improve flood defences and through its role as a sustainable drainage approval body, NCC will also ensure that new developments over 100 square meters will comply with the new regulations.
Supplementary question:
Councillor Mogford expressed his thanks to everyone involved.
ii. Cabinet Member for Education and Skills
Councillor J Watkins asked the following question that had been submitted:
‘Primary Head Teachers recently wrote to you outlining their serious concerns on matters including the state of school buildings and the funding of schools, what has been your response to their letter?’
The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills responded:
The Newport Association of Primary Head Teachers wrote to Cabinet expressing their views on the budget consultations for 2020/21. The views of Head Teachers are always considered within the wider context of budget consultation. This year more than three and a half thousand responses were received from citizens and organisations across the city regarding a range of service issues. As a Cabinet we listened carefully to the public and made a decision to invest a further £10.4 million pounds into our schools to further support the education of children and young people.
Minor works and repairs should be managed within existing school budgets. However, the re-development and larger scale capital maintenance of schools where appropriate, is financially supported through additional funding streams, allowing schools to receive significant investment without using their delegated budgets.
In 2019 Cabinet took a decision to invest £24.5 million pounds into the 21st Century Schools Band B project. This scheme will provide a total of £70 million pounds worth of investment in to our schools estate which will bring ‘once in a lifetime change’ to a number of Newport schools over the next four years.
In 2018/19, as Cabinet Member for Education I requested a ring fenced allocation of £1.1 million pounds to support school capital maintenance. Cabinet supported this request and in turn this supported 23 individual school building projects across the city.
In 2019/20 the council was awarded a further £1.8 million pounds to offset capital expenditure across schools. The full £1.8 million was re-invested across the school estate. Maintenance work is currently underway on the identified projects at High Cross Primary, Llanmartin Primary, Milton Primary and Lliswerry High schools. The Council has recently received notification of a similar grant totalling £2.1m for 2020. Work is currently underway to confirm how this can be spent to best and maximum effect.
I would also like to take this opportunity to assure you that Cabinet Members and Officers of the council are working tirelessly to look for every funding opportunity available to the city, ensuring that we are maximising every penny. Some excellent examples of our success include:
1. The Council has successfully submitted two bids to Welsh Government in relation to the ‘Reducing Class Sizes’ grant. An amount of £520,000 has been awarded to undertake a project at Maesglas Primary School, and £580,000 has been allocated to a project at St Woolos Primary School. These projects are underway and are scheduled for completion by September 2020.
2. In 2019 the Education Service was advised that a grant funding application to Welsh Government’s Integrated Care Fund had been successful. As a result, an amount of £300,000 was awarded to support the expansion of Ysgol Bryn Derw through refurbishment of an annexe building within the school grounds. Notably, this represented the first time across the Aneurin Bevan Health Board area that an Education project had been awarded funding from this source. The amount of money allocated to the project was later increased to £430,000, and the work was completed in January 2020.
3. Notification that Welsh Government had approved a funding application of £5.8m in relation to a specific Welsh-medium Capital Grant to enable the establishment of a fourth Welsh-medium primary school. This is one of the largest allocations given to any project across Wales. This funding will be used to open a brand new school for Pillgwenlly, a fourth Welsh Medium Primary and an expanded Tredegar Park Primary.
So to conclude, you can see that Cabinets’ response to consultation feedback from Head Teachers both this year and in previous years has been robust.
Supplementary:
Councillor J Watkins asked did the Cabinet Member acknowledge that the concerned raised by the Primary School Head Teacher’s were real.
Councillor Giles was aware of the concerns and issues that were identified by Head Teachers and a priority list was put in place but addressing issues was difficult with financial cuts faced by the Council. Every penny raised or funding provision for Education was put back into the schools.
Councillor R Mogford asked the following question that had been submitted:
‘Given the fact that a number of Newport secondary schools are burdened with significant debt (Caerleon Comprehensive for example has a £1.2 Million debt and rising, due to what some might say is inadequate funding). How does the Cabinet member propose that these debts be paid down, over what timescales at what real cost to the pupils, teachers and other staff that continue to be affected by ongoing cut-backs.’
The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills responded:
Schools budgets were delegated to Governing Bodies to manage efficiently and effectively. Schools can apply for a temporary licensed deficit providing they have a deficit recovery plan which outlines the actions the Governing Body intends to take forward in order to reach a balanced budget. Cllr Mogford will be fully aware of the plans to reduce Caerleon Comprehensive Schools debt as he sits on the Governing Body at Caerleon Comprehensive and is responsible for such decisions and actions.
It is within the gift of the Governing Body to determine how they will manage their budget and to consider how they will reduce their spending if they need to. Governing Bodies should consider which cost savings have the least impact on learners.
Incidentally, Caerleon Comprehensive School received £4.9 million pounds of funding last year. Caerleon Comprehensive School has always received the third highest school budget within the city. The two secondary schools ahead of Caerleon Comprehensive, receiving larger budgets have a higher number of Key Stage 4 learners and a higher proportion of pupils with Additional Learning Needs and pupils entitled to Free School Meals. Most would agree that this is right and fair.
The local authority ha established deficit recovery support and challenge meetings for those schools currently in deficit. Schools meet with the local authority every six weeks to discuss their deficit recovery plans and how they are progressing. The first priority is for schools to ensure that they do not continue to overspend and are tackling their ‘in-year deficits’. The majority of schools with a deficit have provided reassuring pans to address this. Remaining deficits can be addressed over a much longer timeframe. In some cases this maybe between 5 and 7 years. It is important that we support schools on a case by case basis.
You will also be aware that this evening, Cabinet has asked full council to agree a schools funding increase from £96.5 million to £106.5 million. This significant increase will support schools cost pressures and may also support some of the deficit budgets situations. Whilst I am very pleased that Cabinet colleagues have committed this £10 million pound increase, it’s important to note that any additional funding will not replace diligent financial monitoring required to keep schools budgets balanced.
Supplementary:
Councillor Mogford mentioned that as a role of governor he worked hard on behalf of the schools and authority to reduce the deficit, therefore what would the Cabinet Member do about the debt once the deficit was reduced.
As previously mentioned schools in deficit were asked to meet with the local authority every six weeks. This allowed consistent channels of communication where schools could ask for support or the local authority could offer assistance. In many circumstances, finance officers had visited schools to support school business managers with their budgets, accurate forecasting and the production of deficit recovery plans. Human resource officers supported schools with benchmarking information and officers from the Business Improvement Team have supported school financial reviews. These reviews provided useful recommendations for low impact costs savings. Moving forward, it was our aim to ensure all schools were provided with a financial review and bespoke support. A permanent model of support was currently being designed within Education Services to ensure that best practice was shared effectively.