Local authority set for £9.6m overspend

The budget monitoring report will be discussed by West Northamptonshire Council's cabinet on 18 September, at the Forum in Towcester

A council has forecast a budget overspend of £9.6m due to the growing cost of adult social care, children's services and education.

In a report due to go to West Northamptonshire Council's cabinet on Thursday, it said the adult social care service was predicted to spend £10.4m on top of allocated funds, due to pressures in the independent care sector.

The council said the National Insurance and National Living Wage increases had also had an impact.

It said work was under way towards closing the gap.

The authority has forecast a £7.3m overspend on the Northamptonshire Children's Trust (NCT) and a £1.1m overspend in education services, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Reform UK councillor John Slope, cabinet member for finance, said: "With limited funding and resources coupled with a continued rise in demand for the services supporting our most vulnerable residents, we're finding it a real challenge to keep our books balanced this year.

"Although it's not unusual to forecast an overspend at certain points of the year given our ongoing financial pressures, it's always concerning and a top priority for us to close this 2% gap by year end.

"We're starting the work now on next year's budget-setting process to identify further savings and efficiencies that will help us to protect essential services and deliver better value for money."

In February, the previous Conservative administration set a revenue budget for 2025-26 of £431.8 million, having initially started the budgetary process last summer with an anticipated £53m gap, which it managed to close.

During the budget process, it also set aside £11.4m in contingencies to tackle any exceptional expenditure arising across its services.