West Northants children's services spending under scrutiny as care placements hit £25,000 a week

In the last financial year, both councils that oversee the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT) were forced to absorb a £31.2m budget overspend due to the growing demand and complexity in social care. West Northants was responsible for around £17.4m of the overspend and North Northants took on just over £13.5m based on their contract split.

The NCT’s director of finance and resources, Andrew Tagg, told a scrutiny meeting on Tuesday (June 16) that nearly 90 per cent of the overspend was down to the cost of children’s placements.

The meeting heard that the organisation currently spends on average £7,600 per week for each child placed in private residential care, which amounts to almost £400k for a full year. Meanwhile, the authority’s highest cost residential placement was £1.3m a year, which would work out at around £25,000 every week.

The number of young people in such placements has grown by around a third, from 150 children in April 2025 to 198 in March 2026. At the same time, officers said the sector has also faced sustained cost pressures within the provider market due to inflation.

‘This is not a Northamptonshire issue, this is a national issue’

This year’s budget picture follows a pattern of similar outturns reported in previous years. A £16.6m overspend was recorded in 2024/25, a £32m overspend in 2023/24, and in 2022/23 the Trust was £21m over budget.

During the meeting, reference was made to a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government report in 2019, which branded children’s services in Northamptonshire “one of the worst-performing yet most expensive in the country”.

A government order was made to take services out of the local council’s hands, with an expectation to create the conditions for a ‘good’ children’s service and to secure an improved judgment at its Ofsted inspection before they can be brought back in-house.

Speaking at the meeting, chief executive of the NCT, Colin Foster, reflected the challenges that face the county: “Having been here now for just under six years, I get worried in Northamptonshire when we’re not aligned with the rest of the country where the pressures we feel are different. That was certainly the case when I arrived.

“I can say the numbers that are being quoted now are in line with the rest of the sector. This is not a Northamptonshire issue, this is a national issue.

“I can say confidently we’re not the worst in the country and we’re not the most expensive and that’s significant progress in Northamptonshire.”

He also said it was important to recognise “where we could’ve been in Northamptonshire”, highlighting previous forecasts which suggested that the Trust could’ve had another 220 children in care by 2026, which would’ve ramped up costs by an extra £22m.

What is being done?

Cllr Fiona Baker, who previously held the cabinet position for children under the last Conservative administration, asked for an update on the £20m that had been set aside in September 2024 to build the council’s own stock of children’s homes to reduce costs and “make a difference to hedge fund managers making a fortune out of us”.

When pushed, officers admitted that “very little” had been spent so far, but said that the projects were now at the point of moving forward after going through feasibility and design work.

Mr Foster added: “This spend can take time to get the best places. I can confidently say, and on behalf of West Northants colleagues as well, no one’s been sat on their hands on the money.”

Chair of the committee, Cllr Ian McCord added: “The single biggest lesson that anyone should take from the failure of NCC (Northamptonshire County Council) was cut the early years, cut the prevention stuff at your peril because when these people are presenting later on, they’re in a much worse situation, their needs are much more complex and therefore the cost of sorting it out is much, much higher.

“It’s the pace of all this. We know it all needs to be done, so what’s our accelerated plan to start rolling this out?”

Members heard that mitigations set out include attracting a permanent workforce – with work over the last year cutting down on agency posts and reducing staff turnover to nine per cent – as well as delivering in-year savings, and supporting step-down from residential to family-based care.

Attempts to shift children placed in residential care into fostering through the recruitment of more carers is also key, according to the NCT. An enhanced needs-led pay offer was introduced in November 2025 and has seen the average number of monthly enquiries double in the six months after its introduction.

The committee also heard that the county was working to develop a regional care cooperative and a fostering hub, which officers said would help to increase negotiation power and influence within the private sector residential care sector.

‘We don’t have a crystal ball’

Despite the mitigations, the meeting heard that the year ahead still looks to be “challenging” due to the large influx in children requiring residential placements after November 2025, after the NCT’s contract sum for 2026/27 was set.

Cllr Michael Stratton, WNC’s cabinet member for children, families and education said: “Year on year the budget comes out, we predict the budget or forecast the budget, we look at what happened the year before, we look at what’s happening within the environment.

“One thing we don’t have is a crystal ball. It’s a very complex area that we have to manage and I think it’s being managed absolutely superbly.

“Of course, I’d like to see the budget managed in a way that it doesn’t go overspend and overrun, however with the statutory direction, I don’t have the control of that and I can’t manage in the way as I would if I was working for a private company where I had full control.

“At the end of the day, it’s not about the money being overspent, it’s more about the children that we are looking and we’re caring for. I think it’s been mentioned a number of times that it is a broken system, and it certainly is.”