Demand for SEND and childrens services lead to county council overspend

The authority also saw a £20m deficit in its “high needs block” funding for support for children with educational needs and disabilities (SEND), the final financial outturn report for 2023/24 said.

But this is a position shared by many other councils across the country, the report added.

And the Government has put in place a “statutory override”, meaning this deficit remains separate to the council’s other reserves, and this move has been extended to the end of 2025/26.

Cabinet members at Staffordshire County Council heard at their latest meeting that demand for SEND support was continuing to grow.

There also remains a high demand for care placements, although the number of children in care had reduced to 1,319 by the end of March.

Cabinet members were asked to approve the financing of the overspend from general balances.

Councillor Ian Parry, cabinet member for finance and resources, said: “The overspend is within an acceptable target of 0.5 per cent.

“There are overspends underlying that and I think, for the purposes of transparency, I need to bring those forward.

"There are overspends in children’s and adult services including home to school transport; this is offset by underspends in adults and other parts of the budget.

“We’ve also needed to utilise some of our contingency to bolster the inflation reserve.

"Inflation is down to the target of two per cent and that means, moving forward, we can be less cautious about our inflation reserves and contingencies in future years, hopefully as inflation stabilises and we can manage those pressures within budgets.

“The capital programme is broadly in line but there are slight advancements of works within highways of around £4m and some slippage of the schools capital programme – around £3.5m.

"Weather affects construction and weather has affected some of this work, meaning there is some slippage there, and there is also £1.7m capital savings in other programmes overall.

“There was a saving in health and care of £5.2m from a range of changes.

"The main part of the overspend is attributable to children’s services, which is £9.7m, which is due to significantly higher demand than we forecast.

“There is an overspend in education services due to pressures for SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) transport.

"We’ve also seen a significant increase in the demand for education, health and care plans.”

But council leader Alan White said the authority was reporting a £3.8m overspend on a £700m budget. “It is a very small percentage of our overall spend when you compare to other authorities and the travails they’re going through”, he added.

“We published a Medium Term Financial Strategy for the five years ahead which, unlike many local authorities, is currently balanced for the five-year term.

"So I think we are managing our resources extremely well, which is testament to Councillor Parry and the finance team.

“The council is well-run and the education department is well-run. But the fact of the matter is we have been handed responsibilities from central Government without the money to back it off.

“We do a job as efficiently as we can with the legal obligations we have been handed. Even with that, we find ourselves in a deficit position, that is we spend more than we receive as a consequence of obligations which exceed the money that is allocated.”

Councillor Jonathan Price, cabinet member for education and SEND, said the High Needs Block was “a real area of concern.”

He said: “The High Needs Block is due to be overspent to a combined total of £30m by the end of the year.

“Although the county council themselves are doing everything through their deficit management plan to try and mitigate some of those rising costs, those costs have increased.

"The rise in education, health and care plans also means a rise in transport and that is why we’re trying to manage the SEND transport deficit as well.

“There is a statutory override, which means the deficit is not shown on the books as our budget. But ultimately it is still real money that the county council is responsible for.

“Whichever government gets in in July, this is a significant problem not just for us but a national issue across all local authorities.

"And it’s something that needs to be tackled sooner rather than later because the figure will continue to rise.”