West Northants Council facing £2.8m overspend on their budget this year, with increasing pressures from children’s services said to be driving up costs

West Northants Council is facing a £2.8million overspend on its budget this year, with increasing pressures from children’s services said to be driving up costs.

The authority has warned of a projected £14m overspend from the Children’s Trust, which is responsible for delivering children’s social care on behalf of both Northamptonshire councils.

Despite the challenges, the council maintains it is “holding steady”.

Cllr Malcom Longley, cabinet member for finance, told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday: “The Children’s Trust is quite clearly our biggest issue. Is it that we haven’t given them enough money in the first place, or is it a situation where they’re not managing it properly? I don’t know the answer, but I’m going to find out.”

He said that the overall costs are being driven down by the contingency budget, of which they set aside £8.2m to cover potential overspend, and savings that they have made in other departments.

Cllr Longley also said that he has been in an “extensive meeting” with the Children’s Trust and has been invited to sit on their financial board to give them “better help” in keeping costs to budget.

In April, the local authority set a budget of £383.5m to deliver services in the current 2023-24 financial year. The forecasted overspend has a variance of less than one per cent from this figure, the meeting heard.

But Cllr Longley told the cabinet that there was still a “danger” that the Children’s Trust could go over its 17 per cent projected overspend and that the authority needed to make sure “everything else is on track”.

Other areas that the council has cited as underlying pressures are temporary and supported accommodation and adult social care, with respective projected overspends of £2.3m and £1.1m, which is consistent with national pressures. Council leader Jonathan Nunn said that throughout the year the council has worked hard every day to “refocus” and get the budget “back on track”.