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Council could be £37m in debt worry




West Berkshire Council is staring down a financial abyss – with a huge £37m debt projection in special needs schools provision – unless the Government bails it out.

The council has an overall forecast spend of £181.2m against a budget of £165.2m.

Social care demand pressures and capital financing costs are to blame.

West Berkshire Council’s offices
West Berkshire Council’s offices

The Dedicated Schools Grants, and within it the High Needs Block, funds the provision of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) commissioned services.

The Dedicated Schools Grant is money given by the Government to the council.

This money can only be used to support education in schools, nurseries and for children with extra needs.

A report to the council’s executive says it should be noted that this year’s overspend of almost £7m is forecast to increase in the short term to around £20m per year.

This, says the report, will “quickly propel this year’s closing cumulative deficit of £17m to £73m by 2027/8 if all currently planned mitigations are realised and almost £95m without them”.

There is currently a statutory override in place for all councils until March 2026 at which point, if nothing changes, the liability – which is projected to be between £31m and £37m – will fall to the council.

Removal of the statutory override (as with the majority of councils nationally) could result in the immediate issue of a bankruptcy notice.

Children’s social care has also overspent by £2.2m.

While the number of children in West Berkshire Council’s care has stabilised, the complexity of needs continues to increase with more children requiring specialist residential settings at significant cost.

There is a potential risk for the 2025/26 budget due to an increase in the number of residential placements since the budget was set.

Children’s services have secured transformation funding in 2025/26 for a dedicated commissioning and brokerage team to ensure placements are both appropriate and affordable.

This initiative aims to save £3m over the period of the project.

The education and SEND budget have an overspend of £2.37m.

Almost £1m of this relates to home-to-school transport provision.

The report says both the number of clients being supported by the service and the cost of delivering that support has risen, again, due to the increasing complexity of needs.

The education service has also incurred significant agency costs as key posts – namely for educational psychologists, which it says it finds hard to recruit.

The issue goes before the council executive this Thursday (July 3).



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