Claims finances are ‘spiralling out of control’ denied

CORNWALL Council’s deputy leader David Harris has denied the authority’s finances are “spiralling out of control” as he revealed that its overspending has risen to £16 million so far this financial year.

He was responding to comments by the council’s former leader Julian German who asked why the authority had gone from an overspend of £8m in the first quarter of the year to double that by the third quarter when a cost-cutting strategy had been implemented.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s customer and support services overview and scrutiny committee, Independent councillor German said: “The cabinet member told us that the overspend was going to be £8m. We find out on September 30 that the actual overspend is £14.9m and now the cabinet member tells us in his report today that the overspend is £16m. It seems to be spiralling out of control. How have we got ourselves in a position where the overspend has gone from a huge £8m to a humongous £16m without that being forecast?”

Cllr Harris, who is the authority’s Conservative portfolio holder for resources, responded: “Everything that could increase the wrong way is doing so. I don’t think we are spiralling out of control. That suggests we don’t know where we are. We do know where we are and it’s not a good position. “My discussions with [chief operating officer] Tracie Langley

are current and ongoing, and she is proposing and introducing various steps including putting additional resources into looking at every line of spending, and where we can make savings and cut costs we are so doing.

“As a council we are a lot better off than many councils but if we carry on as we are without getting a decent settlement [from the Government] in December then give it two or three years and we will have major problems.”

He added: “The area of overspend – housing, homeless, home to school children, children with special educational needs; they are areas where we have to spend money and the demand in those areas is going up, which is occurring across the country. We are taking the strongest possible steps to get the position better, but even with the best team in the world you cannot square a circle.”

Ms Langley said: “Due to some of the controls we put in place between quarter one and quarter two I did expect the overspend to go down. It did not – it increased. It increased because the number of homeless has increased, the costs have increased and the amount of home to school transport coming up to the new school year had increased, and there are some additional social care children who have come into the system who are very expensive.”

She said additional controls on expenditure have been put in place.