We are still waiting for Gavin Brown to return, but I think that we have had a reasonable break, given that time has been against us this morning. I apologise to the bill team for keeping them waiting so long and for the previous evidence session overrunning. The technical glitch did not help.
Item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Scottish Government bill team on the financial memorandum to the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Calum Webster, Helen Carter and Ann McVie. Members have copies of the written evidence that we have received.
We will move straight to questions. As always in this committee, I will start with some opening questions, and then I will open out the session to colleagues. Paragraph 24 of the financial memorandum states:
“Spend by local authorities between April and December of 2014 was £18 million and the full year spend is estimated to be in the region of £29 million.”
Clearly, that is not the full allocation. Are there many discrepancies across Scotland in relation to how the money has been spent? Are some local authorities significantly underspending while others are hitting the full allocation? What will happen to the estimated £4 million surplus?
There has been variation in local authorities’ level of spend. Last year, three or four authorities actually provided extra funding to the welfare fund, because they had used up their allocation, but other areas were below the allocation. A lot of that was to do with the fund’s relatively slow start in its first three months of operation last year. After the first three months, the spend picked up to the level that we had anticipated.
For this year, our informal figures show that the spend is more or less in line with a sort of flat profile at Scotland level. There is still some variation beneath that but, by and large, local authorities across Scotland are spending what we would expect them to spend, and that includes last year’s underspend, which was carried over into this year for local authorities to spend.
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A number of the submissions that we have received from local authorities have raised a significant concern about the funding for administration. For example, Fife Council says that only about half the money that it requires has been allocated to it. How is the administration funding calculated? Two committee members represent the North Lanarkshire Council area, and that council has said that, in the first four months of 2014, it got a 9.73 per cent share of national applications but received only 8.96 per cent of the budget allocation, whereas Glasgow got about 15.5 per cent of applications, yet received 23.4 per cent of the national budget. How are the administration funding and the money that is made available to provide funds for claimants distributed?
In line with normal practice, the basis of the distribution of the funds across local authorities was agreed in the joint COSLA and Scottish Government settlement and distribution group. When the Scottish Government became responsible for local welfare provision and ministers decided that the funding that was being transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Scottish Government should be spent for broadly the same purpose, we started discussing through that group the basis of the distribution across local authorities. We agreed that the administration funding should be based on the historical pattern of applications at local authority level under the old DWP scheme, according to the most recent data that we had available, and that the programme funding would be based on the spend at local authority level under the previous DWP scheme, because that was the best proxy that we had for assessing the need and demand for the new arrangements.
Those were 2012 figures but, given that you have more up-to-date figures on how the funds are being spent and given the difference in demand, are there any plans to reallocate some of the budget, which I know you intend to continue to fix at £33 million a year?
We went back to the settlement and distribution group in June to consider whether we should change the basis of the allocations for 2015-16. The original agreement was to stick with the first basis of distribution for two years so that we could take time to assess what was happening on the ground. Two or three months ago, the agreement was that we should carry forward that original basis of distribution for a further year, because at the moment we have formal statistics only for the first year of the scheme’s operation in Scotland and it was felt that it was too soon to take a view on how we might reallocate funding across local authorities. That agreement was predicated on the basis that, the next time we discuss the matter, we will consider what is actually happening on the ground in local authorities and try to identify appropriate indicators to assess need and demand by local authority area.
The submission from North Ayrshire Council, which is my area, states:
“The Council projects that for 2014/15 the total number of applications received will be around 12,954 compared to 6,445 in 2013/14”,
which is a doubling. It continues:
“Based on current projections, the council anticipates spending almost £1m more in 2014/15 when compared with 2013/14. A review of the current criteria is required to manage spend within available resources.”
How can the funds that are currently being allocated possibly meet the demand without a significant change in the type of applications that are accepted? Surely if the prioritisation changes so that grants are awarded in only higher-priority cases we will end up with more people going to review, because they will know people who got a grant the previous year. How do we square that circle?
That is a very good question. It is hard to square that circle. The fund is a discretionary scheme, not an entitlement-based one. The guidance is written to give local authorities the scope to change the priority levels. It is a harsh fact that, at some points of the year, some local authorities might be able to meet medium to low-priority applications, whereas other authorities might be able to meet only high-priority cases. Obviously, ministers will want to keep that under review as the pattern of demand for the new funds becomes clearer.
As a number of colleagues will want to explore the issue of review, I will not go into it in any detail. However, I note that, in its submission, North Ayrshire Council has, like a number of other authorities, expressed concern about the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman hearing second-tier reviews, pointing out that
“an estimated review case load of 400”
with “a running cost” of £250,000 represents
“a unit cost of £625, which is more than the average cost of a community care grant in Scotland”,
which is £613. The council says that that
“does not demonstrate value for money ... compared to the ... service being provided by Scottish Councils.”
What are your comments on that?
We expect—and COSLA shares this view—the number of reviews to rise significantly from their levels in the first year of the fund’s operation. We looked at the characteristics of the second-tier review when we issued our consultation response on review last year, and it was felt that the SPSO met the desirable characteristics and would be able to deliver the reviews better than some of the alternative options. In particular, the requirement to be independent of the decision was quite a big factor in considering who would be best placed to deliver the reviews.
There is also the issue of estimated cost. The business regulatory impact assessment that we published to support the bill looked at the estimated costs of second-tier reviews by the ombudsman, by a tribunal and by a local government panel. Even though the costing that you have quoted seems quite high per case, our estimates in the BRIA suggested that the ombudsman would incur the lowest cost per case on the basis of there being 2,000 cases a year. I guess that there are a variety of issues around that.
There is an issue about second-tier reviews being carried out by the local authority involved, but I suppose that a local authority could handle its neighbour’s reviews and vice versa. That might be more cost effective. However, if the overall fund does not increase but, as has been mentioned, the level of awareness rises and prioritisation changes, more cases will go to review and we will end up with a larger amount of money being spent on reviews than will be spent on what is being delivered. Obviously, I am not talking about the bulk of the funds, but more money will go into administration than will go into delivery at the sharp end.
Judging by the figures that we published in the BRIA, I think that that would be an issue regardless of the second-tier review route that was taken under the bill. As I have said, the figures for a tribunal and a local government panel are higher than the figure for the ombudsman. I accept that the cost looks high in relation to the grants that are being paid out, but the cost must be met to give people the opportunity to have a proper, independent second look at a case.
In some local authorities, more than half of all the reviews find in favour of the applicants. Is the issue that some local authorities are not delivering the awards that they should be delivering?
The high overturn rate is probably partly attributable to the fact that this is a new type of service that local authorities are delivering. As Ann McVie has mentioned, it is a discretionary rather than an entitlement-based scheme, and there has been a period of local authorities feeling their way into how to make such decisions and take into account clients’ vulnerabilities and special requirements. We are working to ensure that there is consistency in decision making across local authorities and that the guidance is being applied consistently, notwithstanding the discretion in decision making that local authorities have within the guidance. The high overturn rate is possibly related to the fact that it is a new scheme that requires a new way of working from local authorities, which we are trying to help them get to grips with.
Why was it decided to have fixed budgets, given that it is bound to be the case that fewer people will be aware of the funding in the first year and demand will increase with time? What was the thinking behind having £33 million a year for three years rather than having a steady increase in the fund as demand increases, so that local authorities do not have to continue to tighten the criteria as the funding diminishes?
Ministers took the view that the funding is part of the budget process and that it will be reassessed or reappraised every year when the budget document is presented to Parliament. It was a bit of an unknown. In the financial memorandum, we set out how much was spent under the old DWP arrangements, and ministers decided to increase the amount of money that was transferred from the DWP to the Scottish Government and then onward to local authorities. They came to the view that £33 million would broadly restore what had been spent historically in Scotland under the old DWP scheme and that, to give a degree of stability, that would be maintained for the first three years of the scheme. That will be discussed and challenged through the budget process as we go forward.
Yes. I know that ministers put in an extra £9.2 million a year to try to provide that cushion, but it now seems that we are up against it.
I want to allow colleagues in, but I have a final question about the computer system and information technology costs. Paper 2 says:
“Argyll and Bute Council notes that following the introduction of the interim Scottish Welfare Fund each local authority had to make its own arrangements for computer systems and that there are now four main systems in use. It goes on to state that—
‘There is now an opportunity to commission a single hosted national system to support the new permanent scheme, with a single set of parameters ... This would be consistent with the national public sector ICT strategy.’”
Are there any plans to take that forward?
The Improvement Service has been examining that issue on behalf of the local government information and communication technology board, and it has just recently completed the first phase of that work. It concluded that a single IT system was probably unworkable due to the set-up costs and integration issues across local authorities.
We have moved on to the second phase, which involves considering how procurement could be taken forward, local authorities’ requirements for integration, and the way that people can work across and within local authorities. That work potentially includes taking forward procurement arrangements for each of the four main providers.
That is an on-going piece of work that we could keep the committee updated on as it moves forward.
I would appreciate that.
The four IT suppliers are the four that already provide a range of services to local authorities. Going with the same IT supplier gives a local authority the ability to embed the new system in its other services. They are not four new IT suppliers that are completely unknown to local authorities. There are certain advantages in local authorities buying in a new module from IT suppliers that they are already working with.
Okay. Thank you very much for that. I now open out the session.
As a member of the Welfare Reform Committee, I can follow up some of the discussion.
On the financial memorandum and the second-tier review issue that the convener touched on, local authorities have obviously expressed concern about the SPSO taking on the second-tier review role. We heard a little bit about that at the Welfare Reform Committee meeting yesterday. Is there an issue with individual local authorities—particularly Scotland’s smaller local authorities—handling such a small number of second-tier reviews? If the reviews remained with those authorities, would there be an issue with their having such a small case load that they would not be able to maintain the expertise to deal with them?
That is part of the issue. The ability to bring in independent members for second-tier review panels is also potentially a difficulty for local authorities. It is a fair point. If the number of cases stays so low, maintaining that expertise and getting into the mindset of the decision making that is required under the scheme could be difficult.
I turn to the assumption that there will be 2,000 reviews per year. I would have thought that that could still be an issue for some of the smaller authorities. Why did you arrive at the assumption that there will be 2,000 reviews per year?
That is a very good question.
That is why I asked it.
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The short answer is that we had a lot of discussion with COSLA, local authorities and the Independent Review Service, which used to provide the same type of service under the old DWP scheme. It was not quite a finger-in-the-air process to arrive at the figure of 2,000, because it seemed a reasonable number. The numbers for this year, for example, have been very low; I think that we had 120 second-tier reviews for community care grants and only 24 for crisis grants, which was very low and probably lower than we expected. The informal feedback that we have had from local authorities this year leads us to expect that the numbers will probably double by the end of the second year of the scheme.
We took a view that 6,000 seemed far too high given the experience of what is happening now in Scotland, and we arrived at the figure of 2,000, which is somewhere in the middle, in consultation with stakeholders.
I recognise that this is difficult territory, given that it is uncharted and pretty new for the Government and local authorities. Nonetheless, you have a lower-end estimate of 400 reviews per year. The convener made the point that, at that level, the funding per case would mean that more would be spent to administer the case than would be awarded, which seems rather cost ineffective. I am not advocating this approach for obvious reasons—at least, I hope that they are obvious—but it would almost be better just to pay the person, as that would be more cost effective.
Mr Webster set out that involving the SPSO would be the most cost-effective option. I ask for a bit more information on the other options and their costs.
The consultation that we sent out last November on the draft bill included a specific section on reviews. One of the advantages of having a bill was that we could have an independent second-tier review panel, and the consultation suggested the options of the SPSO, a tribunal and a local government panel with independent representation. With COSLA, we worked up cost estimates for local government panels, and we discussed with the tribunal service and the SPSO set-up costs and estimated annual costs for the other two options. We included the estimates in the BRIA that supported the bill. Based on 2,000 cases a year, the estimated cost per case was £202 for the SPSO; £413 for the tribunal; and between £420 and £520 for the local government panel.
So the costs for the other options were significantly in excess of those for the SPSO.
Yes.
Thank you.
Local authorities have pointed out that the administration of the new fund is in addition to what they did before. This is not the upgrading or stepping up of something that was already in place; this is something that is entirely new, so the costs are new costs. If funding of the administration costs falls short, local authorities will have to find the additional costs from within existing budgets.
The evidence that we have taken so far at the Welfare Reform Committee shows that staff who were doing jobs in local authority welfare and benefit departments have been transferred across to take care of the Scottish welfare fund. That means that the jobs that they were doing are not being done any longer. Somewhere along the line, local authorities are being burdened: they are either finding the staff to administer the Scottish welfare fund from existing staff, or trying to run the Scottish welfare fund without the number of staff required to do that work. Have you any indication at all of the additional costs, and have they been factored into the considerations?
We are aware of the concerns that local authorities have raised with the committee on admin funding. There is a recognition that these are new costs. We provided set-up costs to local authorities of around £2 million to help them get themselves ready for the start of the new fund.
The admin funding that we provide to them is roughly 15 per cent of the programme funding for the scheme, which we think is a fairly generous amount for administering a scheme of this type. Ten per cent is the typical amount that we would use in procuring administration systems throughout the Scottish Government. The figures range from, at the lower end, 7 to 8 per cent for loan schemes, up to 15 per cent for complex projects that require quite a lot of reporting. On that basis, we think that the admin funding is fairly generous.
We realise that local authorities are making a case that the funding is not sufficient for them to deliver the scheme, and there has been correspondence between Councillor O’Neill and the Deputy First Minister on the admin funding.
I think that this point came up yesterday at the Welfare Reform Committee, but COSLA is undertaking a benchmarking exercise to look at the true costs, at what some local authorities might learn from others that are delivering within their admin funding and at the areas where the costs are not being captured quite as they should be. The DFM said that she will be willing to consider the evidence that comes from that benchmarking in looking at future admin funding.
That is really helpful.
We heard the convener and Jamie Hepburn comment on the cost of the SPSO doing the second-tier assessments compared with the cost of local authorities doing them, in relation to the amount of awards. That issue has been interrogated. However, we have also heard evidence to the effect that the burden that will be placed on the SPSO, regardless of whether we believe the figures are right, appears to have been underestimated in exactly the same way as local authorities argued the burden on them had been underestimated.
We have heard that the burden that will be placed on the SPSO will mean that it will require either more staff to be recruited to take care of the responsibilities or staff to be transferred from their current responsibilities to these additional responsibilities.
The evidence that we have heard so far is that there has been an underestimate of that cost. Will you comment on that?
We have been in discussions with the SPSO for quite some time and, as I mentioned, we discussed the issue with the tribunal service as well, during the consultation. The SPSO has been in discussions with its counterparts in Northern Ireland who administer a similar process over there. That is really where the cost estimates for delivery stemmed from. The SPSO has been looking at an existing service, and although there will be differences in implementation here, I think that that is a reasonable basis for assumptions or estimates to be made on running costs.
You do not believe that there has been an underestimate, overall, of the burden that will be placed on the SPSO.
I do not think so. We have been engaging with the SPSO for quite some time and we have a range of potential numbers of cases that they have considered and factored into the running costs.
It is too early to tell what level of reviews we will end up with, but on the current figures, I think that 2,000 is probably quite a good estimate, and that is what the SPSO has based a lot of its thinking on.
Okay. We will obviously have to interrogate that elsewhere. Thanks.
On reading the papers, my initial reaction was to ask how on earth we can be spending £5 million in order to hand out £33 million. That is 15 per cent, as I think you said. The public sector generally gets criticised for being bureaucratic and inefficient, and such figures absolutely underline that. Surely somebody can hand out £33 million without that costing £5 million. Can you clarify what is involved in the administration, and especially in the second-tier reviews?
Initially, there is the first level of call handling and taking applications. That is the simplest, up-front element of the administration. Beyond that, local authorities find that they are incurring quite significant costs in taking forward the awards. In cases where local authorities are providing goods, for instance, there are issues around receipting, arranging deliveries and ensuring that things are being followed up, and then reconciling everything at the end of the process. That adds on costs for local authorities.
The other element on which local authorities have suggested that they are using time and resource is that of trying to fulfil the holistic nature of the welfare fund by passing applicants on to other areas of the local authority that might be able to help them, or signposting them to third sector services that might exist in the area.
I hope that that is a reasonable summary of where the admin costs arise.
Part of me wonders whether we are just going about things in the wrong way. We seem to be saying, “Well, that’s a good cost, and so is that, and we’re offering a bit of advice and a bit of this and a bit of that”—it all builds up. Instead, we could look at it in another way and say that, if around £600 is to be given out, £50 is a reasonable amount for admin and we should do what we can for £50. Would that not be another way of looking at it?
I guess that that is another way of approaching it.
The idea behind the fund is to try to focus as much as we can on the applicants and on trying to help them to move on from whatever crisis they are in. A crisis grant by itself will not necessarily do that. It will meet their immediate need, but what if there was an extra function in the welfare fund of signposting or referring them to another service that helps them to manage their lives more effectively and avoid crisis in the future? That is one of the functions that we hope the fund can support.
I am sure that the Welfare Reform Committee and others will have looked at the issue, but coming at it afresh I find it quite strange, as we already have citizens advice bureaux and loads of other organisations out there that are meant to be pointing people—I am sure that it is the same people—towards places where they can get help, assistance and advice. As I see it, £5 million for administration is £5 million that could actually be helping people who are in crisis. The evidence from Glasgow seems to show that only the most desperate people are getting help. Any pound that we could get out of that £5 million would be a pound that could help real people with real struggles. I accept that that is not your decision; I just wanted to give my reaction to it.
Thank you, John. The next question is from Gavin Brown.
I was interested in Mr Mason’s remarks. Following on from them, would it be correct to say that, although the £5 million is classed as administration funding in the financial memorandum, at least some of that money is not really being spent on processing forms as there is also an advice function? Did I hear that correctly?
I would not necessarily class it as an advice function. It is more about referring or signposting people to other sources of advice that might be able to help them with other issues that they might have when presenting to the fund, rather than offering advice at that point on the issues that the applicants might have. That is how I would see it.
I have a couple of questions about paragraph 19 of the financial memorandum and the table that follows it. The first column from the left is headed “Programme Funding” and it shows for each of three financial years a sum of £33 million. If I heard your answers to the convener correctly, the actual outturn for 2013-14 was approximately £29 million. Is that correct?
12:30
Yes.
Again, if I heard you correctly, does that mean that the programme funding for 2014-15 becomes £37 million?
Yes. That money is carried forward within the local authorities to be spent on the welfare fund.
So the entirety of the underspend for 2013-14 goes into 2014-15. Is that right?
Yes, that is right.
The next column in the table is headed “Administration Funding”. For the first two financial years, the amount for that is given as £5 million. For 2015-16, the amount is down as “TBC”. For some reason, I thought that I read somewhere that the amount for that financial year was probably going to be £5 million but I cannot now find that reference. Is the “TBC” figure going to be £5 million or in that ball park, or are you unable to say at this stage?
I cannot say that the figure will be exactly £5 million—
Sure.
We still have to go through the budget processes. I understand that funding is available to meet that level of spend, but the actual amount remains to be seen. It will possibly be influenced by the benchmarking work that COSLA is currently undertaking.
So you cannot give an exact figure—that is fair enough. Would it be fair to say that the figure will not be significantly higher or lower than £5 million? I do not want to put words in your mouth, so just say no if you cannot confirm that. I am just trying to get a feel for what the financial memorandum is most likely to be.
I cannot say what the figure will end up being. I do not imagine that it will vary significantly either way, but obviously it is subject to discussions between the Scottish ministers and COSLA on admin funding for next year and the outcome of the benchmarking work.
That is a fair enough answer.
The next column in the table is headed “Second Tier Review Funding”. You have been asked a number of questions in relation to that; I have just one question on it. Obviously, you are working on the basis of figures from not many years and you are trying to work out what the most accurate figures are likely to be. You put down the two figures for the two financial years. My question is: given that the financial memorandum was published on 10 June and you would have done your homework, presumably, in the weeks and months leading up to that point, has anything happened in the almost four months since then that would change any of those “Second Tier Review Funding” figures, or do they remain your best estimates for 2014-15 and 2015-16?
The figures remain our best estimates. We have some understanding of an increase in second tier reviews in the early part of this financial year, which suggests that there would be enough reviews to make it viable for the SPSO to run a unit, but beyond that there is nothing to change the figures that we have in the memorandum.
Thank you.
There is quite a lot of talk about linking with other services. Is that partly to ensure that no case that meets the relevant criteria slips through the system, or is it just to make sure that additional help is given to the people who apply?
I think that it is to ensure that the people who apply get the help that is available and which they can get. The way the scheme works is potentially why we are seeing fewer reviews than we might have seen under the previous DWP scheme. If an applicant is refused, the hope is that they will be referred or signposted to another service, either within the local authority or within the local area, that is able to help them. Applicants are not just getting a flat refusal, so we hope that they are having a better experience and getting a better outcome from the scheme.
I am interested to hear that the number of reviews is down. There is a lot of interest in the ombudsman, but the fact is that there is not much of a variation in the administrative costs either for a high or for a low number of appeals.
Has any thought been given to how the nature of the ombudsman’s decisions will differ from the nature of the decisions made by local authorities? I presume that the ombudsman will be administering national criteria across Scotland while reviews by local authorities will be carried out very much in the context of the money available to a particular local authority and the demand that it is facing. As one of you said earlier, money might simply not be available because of high demand or the time of the year, but I presume that, if the appeals system is being administered on a national basis by the ombudsman, it will not take such factors into consideration.
The intention is for the ombudsman, in considering a review application, to take into account local conditions and the priority level that the local authority was operating under. In other words, the ombudsman will not be looking at a case simply from a central point.
So you do not envisage the nature of the ombudsman’s decisions being fundamentally different from what they would be under a local authority system.
No, I do not think so.
No.
I think that you have said that the money can be carried over from year to year, but what happens if a lot of appeals are granted and no money is available in a particular year’s budget? Is the assumption that the local authority would just have to dip into the following year’s budget? How would that work?
I think that the assumption would be that the local authority would have to dip into the following year’s budget. However, we hope that that will apply in only a very small number of cases and, as Calum Webster has said, the ombudsman will be expected to take into account the state of the budget in the local authority when it remakes a case.
Thank you.
That concludes questions from colleagues, but I want to touch on an issue that has not yet been raised. In its fairly interesting submission—indeed, it is different from the others that we have received—the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations says:
“We are concerned about the relative speed at which the Bill is being taken forward”,
and it has suggested that it be delayed for options to be reviewed. In a section of the submission entitled “Rationale for the Legislation”, it says:
“Before the Bill begins to undergo parliamentary scrutiny, we need to be clear about the rationale and necessity of the legislation. Is there a threat to the continuity of the Fund? Will the legislation help applicants to be better protected? Is legislation absolutely necessary?”
We feel that bringing in the bill now will result in three definable benefits for applicants. First, applicants will potentially have the certainty that welfare funds will continue; at the moment, they are delivered only under a voluntary agreement between COSLA and the Scottish ministers. Secondly, the bill will allow for independent review by SPSO, which is not possible under the current arrangements. Finally, there is an option for the funding for welfare funds to be ring fenced.
A lot of submissions that have been sent particularly to the Welfare Reform Committee have looked at operational issues and matters that affect the scheme’s day-to-day running. They do not necessarily impact on the bill, but they will have an impact on the regulations and the guidance that will sit underneath all of this. We will continue to take on board and learn from such views as we go through the process of introducing the legislation, and I hope that we can reflect that learning in the regulations and guidance that will come into effect after the legislation is passed.
Michael McMahon wants to come in on that point.
This is more of a statement, but I will ask it as a question to see whether you agree. Another point that was made at yesterday’s meeting of the Welfare Reform Committee as a justification for enshrining the Scottish welfare fund in legislation was that the certainty of the existence of the fund will allow local authorities to retain staff and build up expertise in its delivery. Do you see that as a valid reason and justification for this legislative process?
I guess so—if local authorities themselves see that as a big advantage. I am not well enough versed in their human resources procedures and processes and how they recruit and retain to comment on the matter.
It certainly convinced me.
Ah well, that is something.
The SCVO submission also raises the issue of training, and I note that some of the submissions have commented on the amount available for staff training. How much funding is going to be available as we move forward? Obviously all organisations have staff turnover, but do you expect training to be self-funded by local authorities?
Local authorities will have to deal with their own turnover issues, but some of the £2 million set-up funding that, as I have pointed out, was provided before the fund was even established was used for training materials and courses for would-be decision makers.
Over the 18 months in which the fund has been running, we have run a number of seminars on specific decision-making and prioritisation issues, and we will continue to fund our quality improvement officer, who tries to take a view across cases, spread good practice and help people to develop their understanding and their abilities to take decisions.
We are doing things across the piece to support and help people develop their skills within the fund, but it will be down to the local authorities to manage individuals and issues such as the turnover of staff.
Thank you very much. We have concluded our questions, but do you wish to raise any issue that we might not have covered?
No, thank you.
Thank you very much for answering all our questions, and I thank my colleagues for asking them.
As that is the last item on our agenda, I conclude today’s Finance Committee meeting.
Meeting closed at 12:42.Previous
Draft Budget Scrutiny 2015-16