City to spend extra £57m on children's services

Council tax in Bradford will go up by 4.99%

Bradford's troubled children's services are set to receive an extra £57m as part of the council's budget for 2023/24.

Details of the additional funding were revealed as councillors approved a 4.99% rise in council tax on Thursday.

Last month the authority's children's services were rated "inadequate" by Ofsted for the second time since 2018.

The funding comes as the department prepares to be taken over by a Children's Trust in April.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the Labour council leader Susan Hinchcliffe called it the “most challenging budget ever.”

“We are living in the most challenging of times, we’ve had years’ of austerity, the pandemic, war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis," she said.

"Bradford is not a place that can tolerate big economic shocks.”

She said children’s services, was "our number one investment priority" and apologised they were "not good enough”.

The extra funding will help cover the rising number of high-cost placements for children in care, which can cost £270,000 a year per child, and the high level of agency staff employed, which costs over £2m a month.

The budget set aside £58.4m to cover inflation, pay rises and rising energy costs and an additional £5m for adult social care.

The meeting heard the council will have to dip into its reserves to the tune of £44.3m to balance the budget.

Reacting to the budget Conservative Mike Pollard said: “Shifting through the wreckage of the Executive’s budget proposals, it seems there are very few deckchairs on this year’s Titanic left to be shifted.

“Next year this Council may be looking at being unable to balance its budget.”

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