Dear Parents/Carers,

I wanted to write to you all to explain further the position we are in currently in relation to the clawback. This follows a meeting held on Thursday the 25th of July by West Berks Council (WBC).

In this meeting the Chair, Councillor Jeff Brooks stated unequivocally that WBC would not take away funds from schools if it was evidenced that their budget would be impacted. He stated that “no school will go into deficit this year and their budget will not be impacted” by the retrieval of the funds he described as surplus.

Councillor Brooks noted that non-committed funds were those “not allocated to a project or a specific spending requirement and will not affect their day-to-day finances”. Councillor Brooks said that these recovered funds would be distributed across the local area. This is, however, contrary to what we were told by Ann Marie Dodds who stated that the money clawed back would go towards offsetting the deficit held within the high needs block.

As you will be aware all schools are required to plan for their finances in a 3-year Budget Plan and Brookfields is no exception. We produce a 3-year budget plan each year to enable those scrutinising our finances to understand what we are planning on spending our money on and what position this would leave the school in by the end of year 3. Not to do so would not be an effective use of the funding provided to us to meet our pupils' needs.

However, the formula that Councillor Brooks refers to is not sufficient to run our school. Despite our careful financial planning this is demonstrated by our in-year deficit of ‑£1,525,350. It means our costs outweigh our funding. This is why we need our reserves. No school wants to run with an in-year deficit. So why do we have one?

Our funding is determined according to a formula created in 2013 and which does not reflect the costs of our staff in real terms. In order therefore to provide a close approximation to the levels of staffing determined by the Needs Weighted Pupil Units or top-up funding we currently get, we have had to overspend. We have had to do this to both try and provide enough staff to reduce the number of behavioural incidents that have occurred this year and importantly to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for our pupils. We have only been able to do this knowing we have a reserve.

We have a premises investment programme in order to maintain the standards we are currently operating at, and which are part of the offer to children with SEN. We have a hydrotherapy pool on site, essential to our children and young people with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties and those with additional physical needs. We arranged a survey of our hydrotherapy pool long ago but received the report only recently. Vital repairs to the pool were discussed at our Governors meetings and it was agreed funds would have to be allocated to this as the Health and Safety issues raised, such as new filters, extending the plant room and repositioning the Chemical Inlets to avoid contamination, required urgent attention. We are awaiting a priority plan from the surveyors to enable us to allocate funds accordingly.

We have also had a Site Condition Survey which, when the budget was set, was not allocated funding in this year’s budget, firstly because we did not know what the cost would be of any findings and secondly, because we were waiting for the Accessibility Project to be executed. However, several Health and Safety issues were discovered within the initial visual survey and so we have a further survey taking place on the 30th of July. We will need to make plans to commit funds to remediate for those identified with urgency.

Waiting to be able to bid for Capital Projects funding from the LA, as mentioned by Councillor Brooks last week, was not a feasible option for us. We have been waiting for the agreed Accessibility Project to be delivered by the Local Authority since 2019. Additionally in July 2022 the council asked us to consider expanding to allow for 20 additional pupils requiring a specialist setting to attend Brookfields. We agreed to this and had accepted 3 new pupils on roll to start in January 2025 in anticipation. The enhancement of these new buildings we would be expected to plan for, as we would the Accessibility project on delivery, however we could only allocate funds to these once completed. The LA has pulled out of both projects. If the LA can pull out of a project to widen doorways, fit ramps and upgrade toilets to make them accessible to our population in line with the Equalities Act, after the budget has been agreed, how can we budget successfully?

The grants Councillor Brooks says are available would be required by us now should clawback be implemented, as the funds we are left with are not sufficient to complete the projects detailed in this letter and maintain staffing levels and existing provision, but, given our experiences detailed above, we have had no option but to build a reserve to convert to capital expenditure.

I would therefore challenge the assumption that our reserves have not been counted in our budget plan to pay for our staffing and operational costs. I would challenge too, the statement made by the Councillor that our budget will not be impacted. We have a 3-year Budget Plan to allow for new pressures and accommodation of inevitable unforeseen pressures. In our forecast for 2025-26 as it stands, our reserves are back to within the 10% buffer allowed for the anticipated pay increases, changes to our pupil population and any other capital projects we must carry out ourselves. However, without further cost-saving measures introduced in school, our forecast for 2026-27 already takes us to -£803,079. It would be incumbent on us as an SLT to decide how we would reduce this and work towards a balanced budget.

However, should the clawback be enforced, our 2025-26 forecast puts us into a deficit straight away of -£755,750 and by 2026-27, -£2,068,764. This would be an impossible mountain to climb.

Our Governors, in conjunction with the SLT, have produced the following summary statement:

“As the Governing Board and Senior Leadership Team at Brookfields School we strongly disagree with West Berkshire Council’s view that our reserves are surplus and not required by the school. Our reserves were both earmarked and essential, to enable vital investment in our staffing, site and buildings.

The reasons the reserves had built up are many and complicated. One main factor was our problem attracting sufficient staff to meet the increasingly complex needs of our pupils and thereby reduce behavioural incidents, and another vital contributory factor was the delay since 2019, to a council project to improve the accessibility and toilets of the school. On completion of the Accessibility Project, significant investment of our own into the site was planned for to ensure maximum benefit for our pupils. We were only notified on the 15.04.24 that the council had cancelled this project, after our budget plan had been published.

We need urgent investment in our boilers / plant room, swimming pool roof, and hydrotherapy pool. Failures of our plant room and pool have previously resulted in the school repeatedly having to close this resource which is essential for our pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties as well as those with additional physical disabilities. The implications of clawing back £2m from Brookfields are significant. The condition of the school has deteriorated while we waited for the work to be done by the council, and a recent Condition Survey found many potential Health and Safety concerns to which we had allocated funds as a priority. We highlighted this at the Heads Funding Forum for this very reason, but this was not accepted. If our reserves are clawed back, we are unable to address any of these issues – and the council has clearly stated to us that it will not do so as we were in the process of academisation (which can’t continue currently due to clawback). We firmly believe that it is unreasonable for it to both withdraw from spending its money on our site, and then to clawback our own reserves and so prevent us investing in the buildings ourselves.

We also question the legitimacy of the decision which the council is implementing. There was no suggestion at the time of setting this year’s budget that planned spends needed to be committed for the current financial year, and we already have an in-year deficit demonstrating that our current funding levels are insufficient to meet our ongoing staffing requirements. Recruitment of sufficient staff remains a significant challenge, despite a sustained effort to recruit, and there will be no prospect of this ever improving with reduced funding. We will therefore be unable to safely cater for as many pupils and this will lead to an increased need for out of county placements which will be counterproductive to the LA. Our Premises Improvement Plan could not be finalised as it was dependent on the Accessibility Project and the proposed expansion commencing.

The council stipulated yesterday that funds clawed back will go to pupils with SEND but at both the Schools Forum and the Heads Funding Group it was stated categorically that they will be used towards filling the deficit in the High Needs Block’s budget. We believe strongly therefore, that this purely short-term financial expediency threatens to damage the safety, welfare and educational opportunities of some of the most vulnerable children in our community."

I have invited Councillor Brooks to meet with me to discuss the above as he stated in the Executive meeting that he would be happy to meet with any school adversely impacted. At the time of writing, I haven’t heard back but I will update you all as soon as I have any further information.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I will hold a meeting with any interested parties early in the new Academic Year to answer any questions you may have.

With kind regards
Catherine Bernie
Headteacher