Decision – Allocation of Higher Needs Capital Allocation

That the allocation of
up to £200,000 from the Local Authority’s Higher Needs
Provision Capital Allocation (HNPCA) be approved for works to
address accommodation and site requirements to support the
relocation of the Family Time Service to Fairwinds as a permanent
base.

The Family Time
Service provides a range of services in response to the assessed
needs of Children and Families including family assessments and
supervised contacts as part of the Council’s statutory
Corporate Parenting role.

It was displaced from
its original home at The Ark in Brixham in July 2025 to enable the
expansion of Mayfield School’s Chestnut
Provision.  Whilst it is currently being
delivered from temporary settings this is not financially viable in
the long term and impacts on service delivery and staffing through
the spreading of resources across sites. 

There is currently an
available budget of £2.1m in the HNPCA, and it is already
included within the Children’s Capital Programme with
Director of Children’s Services having delegated powers to
approve expenditure in line with the Department for Education (DfE)
criteria and with local special educational needs and disabilities
(SEND) strategies.

Fairwinds is a Council
Asset that will become vacant in August 2026.  After a site appraisal of available Council sites
including ZigZags, the Monastery, Great Parks and the Polsham
centre; it has concluded that the most viable and suitable location
is Fairwinds and the proposal is to relocate the service to this
asset and for it to become their permanent base.

This decision will
come into force immediately.

Approval to allocate
£200,000 from the Children’s Services Higher Needs
Capital Allocation (HNPCA) to facilitate the relocation of the
Family Time Service to Fairwinds, Occombe, Paignton.