West Berkshire Council “struggling to keep the lights on” as further budget pressures hit the cash strapped authority with child with special needs costing council nearly £1m a year
West Berkshire Council says it is “struggling to keep the lights on” as further budget pressures hit the cash strapped authority.
It is now looking at finding more savings from next year’s finances and is “going down the back of the sofa” to keep things afloat.
It says its highest costs are in children and adult social care and home to school transport, which has increased by around £1.5m from last year.
“This is a significant increase,” says Iain Cottingham, executive member for finance.
“What has happened is we have seen providers walk away saying we are not doing this anymore. Some bus providers have said we can’t make this work for us. We had one in Hungerford that did this last September.
“That supplier pulled, claiming fuel costs were too high to make it viable.”
A replacement service to both John O'Gaunt and King Alfred's schools was found, but the effect of more children considered in need of transport across the district is clocking up the cost.
Mr Cottingham says the council is also funding a single child with special needs to the tune of nearly a million pounds a year.
Mr Cottingham also revealed that there are five other children who cost the council around £50-60k a year each, as they need acute special needs care, and are being taxied as far away as Exmouth, Essex and Cheltenham for help.
In a candid interview, Iain Cottingham says the council has a superb track record in looking after children with needs, but it cannot afford it.
“We have a great track record in looking after these children, but if we have a couple of kids costing a million quid a year it is really going to hurt us,” he says.
Details of the child in question and the package funded by the council remain confidential - but the children’s social care budget is sky rocketing as more and more children are diagnosed and put on special educational plans called EHCPs.
“There are also private organisations which are profiteering from some of these cases,” he says.
“What happens is a child comes in and an assessment is made. We then need to place the child, and we can be in a queue waiting for the next slot with a provider, who will give a cost, but they will also say there is another district waiting behind you, so they can drive the cost up.”
His comments come as senior local government leaders warn that the government will not be able to meet its goals without stabilising the "extremely fragile financial state" of the sector.
In its submission to the Budget, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace) warns chancellor Rachel Reeves she will need to "empower locally led and sustainable economic growth" if they want to improve their national economy.
One way to "overcome barriers”, it says, is to focus on prevention and reduce councils' overspend on children's services by writing off dedicated school grant deficits, capping the cost providers can charge for care and investing more in early help and youth justice services.
Then there is an additional cost and ongoing cost once these children transition to adulthood, adds Mr Cottingham.
West Berkshire’s finance team is this week taking part in a think tank with other councils in Berkshire to see if they can find ways to stop going bankrupt.
Slough is already there. Slough Borough Council issued a Section 114 notice - meaning it is bankrupt - in July 2021, which resulted in government commissioners being appointed to scrutinise the council’s finances. It has a target of raising £600m through property sales by 2027. However, it recently reported it had only raised £223.5m of the £400m due by March 2024.
Wokingham Borough Council needed to find savings of £15m in its budget for this year.
West Berkshire was in a similar position last year with £14m to find, and is now, in the words of Mr Cottingham “going down the back of the sofa” to find funds.
“We do not want to turn the lights off,” he says.
“We were looking for a Q1 budget to give around £2m back to our reserves. Michael Gove made some changes which meant we could have had around £6m in reserves. But all of that money will now be absorbed in home to school transport, and other aspects of adult and children social care.
“So reserves are still around £4m. But we have had to find £3m more savings. We are literally going down the back of the sofa with all the accruals we have, where there is spare cash in estimates. It’s a CFO’s buffer zone, sitting on balance sheets for a rainy day which we are now using.”
It’s the final sweet jar to raid. One of the council’s commercial properties - which include supermarkets and even a petrol station - goes up for sale next week.
“As a council we have used about every lever we can to release funds,” he adds. “If we could keep more business rates it would help. We collect £90m but only get to keep £30m.”
He is convinced the route to financial security is in the amount of council tax that can be collected.
“What we need to be doing is thinking more strategically,” he says.
“We need to really think about what West Berkshire, Newbury, Thatcham etc are. What I mean by that is should we be looking at the district as a commuter area, and therefore should that inform how and what we invest our limited resources in?
“If Sandleford houses had been built we would have another million pounds in council tax. If they had been built five years ago we would have around £15m in the West Berkshire coffers.
“Bayer, Vodaphone, Kleinwort Benson, Sony have all left Newbury in the last decade.
“Vodafone’s global HQ was in Newbury but they moved to Paddington. So we have to think what is the purpose of West Berkshire in terms of attracting people in.
“We have to think how do we drive the revenue to manage the demand for service?”
Budget meetings for 2025/26 are now underway with the council expecting to make announcements on how much cash it needs to keep going in the coming weeks.
