(UK) Derbys: Council SPED overspend goes from $6M to $8.4M
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Children with special education needs, social care and road maintenance continue to pose significant challenges, despite signs of progress, say Derbyshire council officials.
A new report shows that at the end of the last financial year, Derbyshire County Council – run by Reform UK – finished with a slight underspend of £2 million – 0.25 percent of its £792 million budget.
Councillor John Lawson, Reform’s cabinet member for finance, welcomed this news with positivity and caution, saying while it was a “tremendous” achievement, the administration would not “rest on our laurels”.
This follows an election-pledge council tax increase just below the maximum, with more hikes planned in the future and the previous Conservative administration criticised for lower than maximum increases.
The devil is in the detail with the council’s financial position, as it was in January when the budget was announced, with the authority set to be scrapped in March 2028.
While the council has welcomed its better-than-balanced budget, the authority ended the year with a £27.5 million [$37M] overspend in children’s services and £8.8 million[$12M] overspend in adult social services, with the underspend the result of savings in other departments.
These two departments together carry overspends – spending more money than they had allocated – worth more than four percent of the council’s budget.
Social services together make up more than two thirds of the entire council budget – £554 million of the £792 million 2025/2026 budget.
This leaves other departments – mainly corporate services – under increasing pressure to save more to offset the continued pressure on children’s and adult social care, which has been the hot topic of local government finance for years. . . .
The council says the “most significant area” of overspend for children’s services is the provision of children’s home accommodations – with the brunt of extra costs related to private agencies.
Council children’s home placements overspent by £4.6 million while private placements overspent by £13.6 million.
Meanwhile, the overspend for the department providing education, health and care plans for children with special educational needs has increased from £4.5 million [$6M] to £6.3 million [$8.4M].
Officials say they expect request rates to increase and the number of accepted plans to also rise.
The council says it is only managing to process 5.7 percent of EHC Plans – legal documents outlining support for a child – within the 20 week mandatory timescale, with just 87 issued on time in the past year.
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