Council in red only third of way into financial year

Argyll and Bute Council is forecasting an overspend of nearly £3 million by the end of 2018-19 – only a third of the way through the financial year.

A report due to go before the authority’s policy and resources committee today reveals most of the figure is a £2.4m allocation to social work.

An overspend of £350,000 on education, due to increased demand for additional support needs (ASN), and an additional £83,000 being spent on customer services relating to cleaning and catering, is also forecast.

The document, compiled by the council’s head of strategic finance, Kirsty Flanagan, also details an underspend of more than £1.5m by the authority in the 2018/19 year to date.

It says: ‘Steps will be taken to mitigate against this level of overspend continuing throughout the year.

‘The [social work] overspend is across a number of services within social work but in the main relates to unidentified savings for the year.

‘Work is ongoing to identify additional savings/ underspends to cover off the unidentified savings figure of £2.345m.

‘The [education] overspend relates to ASN assistants due to significant increase in demand which cannot be avoided.

‘This is a very early estimate at this stage and will be monitored closely going forward with every effort being made to mitigate this overspend.

‘The forecast out-turn position needs to be closely monitored, particularly the forecast out-turn for social work. If there is no improvement, then consideration will need to be given to putting in place a recovery plan.’

The report also states the underspend is attributable partly to spending less than envisaged on staffing in education. It adds: ‘Under the scheme of devolved school management, schools are permitted flexibility at year end, therefore no forecast variance has been processed. There is also an underspend in relation to the HUB schools due to invoicing delay. Any variances that may impact on the likely out-turn have been reported.’