Work to bring down Northamptonshire Children’s Trust overspend …
Work to bring an expected £21m overspend down at the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT) has been “rather limited”, a council finance boss told councillors. North Northamptonshire Council[1] (NNC) is set to be charged £9.2m more than it had hoped for the last financial year as West Northamptonshire Council[2] (WNC) set to be charged around £11m more than planned.
Janice Gotts, NNC’s executive director of finance and performance, said both unitary authorities were working with the trust to bring NCT’s anticipated overspend from the planned £130m for 2022/23 down but conceded forecasting can be “problematic”. Both NNC and WNC have criticised the trust over recent months, most recently over an Ofsted inspection which rated NCT’s fostering service inadequate[3].
Ms Gotts told her authority’s audit and governance committee on Monday: “In terms of the children’s trust, forecasting is problematic, particularly when you’re in a demand-led service. We’re also hoping to a certain extent that the children’s trust could identify mitigating factors to perhaps offset the overspends, as [NNC] has sought to do with its spending pressures. Unfortunately that has been rather limited coming back to us.”
In a statement on behalf of the two authorities and NCT, they said there has been an “increase in demand and complexity” of children needing support. “The original contract sum was always going to be under pressure due to demand,” they said. NCT was established in November 2020 to provide children’s social care, early help and youth offending services after they were taken out of Northamptonshire County Council’s control.
WNC and NNC have funded it since they were set up in April 2021 but it is run independently by a board of executive and non-executive directors. Its budget for the current 2023/24 financial year has increased to £143m but there are still concerns that it could go over that with high inflation and staff costs rising. Last week, NNC councillors labelled the overspend “a disgrace”.
Cllr Scott Brown said a planned two per cent pay increase for staff after other public sector bodies had awarded staff a far higher increase was “beyond belief”. “Somebody needs to be held to account, it really cannot go on as it is. It’s a disgrace, to put it bluntly. We need to hold someone accountable and at the moment I am not seeing anybody held to account,” he added.
Cllr Lloyd Bunday, NNC’s executive member for finance, told the finance and resources scrutiny committee last Tuesday: “We are concerned. I think it’s been well publicised that the leaders of WNC and NNC are having meetings with the trust. We’re not happy, we’re certainly not happy but we are in a situation where central government has told us that we need to have a trust. The trust can spend money and we have to foot the bill.”
In a statement a spokesperson for the authorities and the trust said: “We are working with the councils to forecast the impact of increasing demand and will recognise this in funding discussions. WNC, NNC and NCT are working together on a number of projects to try and mitigate this pressure, including increased in-house provisions as well as an improved early help offer.”
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References
- ^ North Northamptonshire Council (www.northantslive.news)
- ^ West Northamptonshire Council (www.northantslive.news)
- ^ Ofsted inspection which rated NCT’s fostering service inadequate (www.northantslive.news)
- ^ Fatal stabbing victim was student at University of Northampton (www.northantslive.news)
- ^ signing up for our newsletter here. (data.reachplc.com)