Royal Borough expecting £4million overspend on services

The council’s finance lead has said the Royal Borough is expecting a £4million overspend to cover its services – with demand for children’s care placements among the pressure areas.

A budget monitoring report for months four and five of the 2025/2026 financial year went before cabinet on Tuesday, October 21.

Overall, the total forecast revenue overspend has reached £4.128million but this has been mitigated by a £0.72million underspend in non-service budgets – taking the balance to £3.4million.

The council’s finance lead, Councillor Lynne Jones, told councillors this overspend can be contained through the council’s contingency budget.

The council is required to use this money to cover its statutory services, including temporary accommodation, and adults and children’s services.

The report showed the overspend in children’s services has ballooned by more than £1million compared to the month three forecast – taking the total forecast overspend to £2.19million.

Cllr Jones said: “We have seen an unprecedented increase in numbers over the summer. Unfortunately, the number of young people needing to come into care has pushed the forecast up.

“We did recognise the risk while setting the budget and included just over £1million within [the council’s] contingency [budget].”

She added this increase in the need for placements is being seen nationally.

In total, 28 new placements were needed in the borough for children coming into care over July and August.

Compared to the last budget monitoring report for month three, the forecast overspend for temporary accommodation has decreased by £88,000.

Cllr Catherine Del Campo (Lib Dem, Furze Platt), the lead member for housing, said she feels ‘cautiously optimistic’ about this reduction.

“It does look like our efforts to prevent homelessness are starting to pay off,” Cllr Del Campo said.

“Some good news [is] around the corner with a helpful number of social housing units coming as a result of recent development projects being delivered which should help us to reduce our waiting lists.

“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic at the moment, recognising that housing demand continues to be volatile.”

Local authorities also have a capital expenditure budget, used to cover long-term projects, such as new buildings and infrastructure.

For month five, the budget monitoring report showed an underspend of £3.6million in the forecast capital spending against a budget of £63.5million.

Sally Coneron (Con, Ascot and Sunninghill) said this sounds positive but she questioned if the report shows an actual underspend or if capital projects are being pushed back.

Cllr Coneron said: “Are we really underspending or is there just a lot of work being deferred into the cost for next year?

“The numbers move but the meaning isn’t that clear and it makes it difficult to judge whether the capital programme is under control or just under delivering because savings through slippage aren’t really savings.”

Cllr Jones said the projects will be completed as they come forward to the council.

“If we’re not spending capital [money], then we’re not borrowing money [from the Government]” Cllr Jones added.

“Anything we need to spend at the moment outside our normal day to day [revenue spending] is money that we need to borrow and that is something we don’t like to do.

“We’re not borrowing until we absolutely need to.”