Council forecasting £9.6m overspend this year
17/09/2025
Adult social care is predicted to spend £10.4m over the funds allocated
by Nadia Lincoln, Local Democracy Reporter
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) is forecasting a budget overspend of £9.6m in 2025-26, based on the first four months of the financial year.
Growing costs of key services such as adult social care have been highlighted as the biggest problem area for the Council, along with children’s and education.
WNC has said that work is already underway towards closing the funding gap. It also noted that it found itself forecasting overspends at various points of the budgetary process last year, but ultimately finished the financial year on track.
According to a report going to Cabinet this week, adult social care is predicted to spend an extra £10.4m on top of allocated funds, largely due to pressures in the independent care sector. WNC has said these services have also seen the detrimental effect of the National Insurance increases on service providers and higher inflationary uplifts due to the increase in the National Living Wage.
Other areas of concern for the authority include a forecast £7.3m overspend on the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT), which it says has suffered from increased costs of average placements due to complex needs.
WNC has also noted a £1.1m overspend in education services, which relates primarily to increased demand for Education Health and Care Plans, and additional legal and mediation costs.
Councillor John Slope, the authority’s finance Cabinet member, 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 per cent gap by year end.
“Every year our Council, like authorities across the country, faces significant financial pressures from the ongoing government squeeze on public sector budgets and we know there’s going to be more to come next year.
“That’s why 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 this year, 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. This has already been used by WNC to offset overspends, leaving the £9.6m in-year gap to tackle solely through future savings and efficiencies.
The Council’s revenue monitoring and medium-term financial plan will be discussed at the Cabinet meeting on Thursday, September 18, in the Forum, Towcester.
Published: by the Banbury FM News Team
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