North Northamptonshire Council forecast to overspend by £9.4m
The council has been under Reform UK Majority control since the 2025 election
A budget overspend of £9.4m has been forecast by North Northamptonshire Council (NNC), in its first quarter of 2025/26.
Around two-thirds of the overspend sits with the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT), which has exceeded its budgets year on year, with the council picking up extra costs of nearly £6m.
Cllr Jim Hakewill, who spoke at an Executive meeting outlining the authority’s finances on Tuesday (August 12), said the Council’s current position highlighted the continuation of what he called the “three key budget-busting areas”.
Many of the pressures relate to growing demands for statutory services, which are often subject to expensive outsourcing costs to independent providers.
The large bill from the NCT mainly relates to the high costs and demand for placements for children in care, as well as the amount spent on staffing. Other pressures from the Children’s Services as a whole sit in the Educational Psychology service, which is involved in issuing care plans to children with SEND.
Cllr Elizabeth Wright, who oversees Children, Education and Families services, said there is currently significant investment going on within NNC to provide its own children’s homes and create more SEND places in its schools.
Other pressures for the Council include a £2.7m overspend in Adults Services for costly residential and nursing care, staffing and social care transport. NNC has also noted an almost £2m pressure due to higher demand for the Council’s Home to School Transport service.
Executive member for Finance, Efficiency and Change, Cllr Graham Cheatley, said the predicted overspend “reflects the increasing financial challenges that local government is facing around social care for both adults and children”.
He added: “It’s a theme that we’ve obviously seen and had to accept over the last few years.
“I am confident that the officers will continue to seek mitigations to provide efficiencies.”
The predicted spend for the year represents a 2.9 per cent increase on the authority’s £405m budget, which the former Conservative administration set earlier this year.
The Council has set aside a contingency fund of just under £3m to combat ‘exceptional expenditure’, which has not yet been used. NNC said it could be employed later in the year to help balance the books, but that it will look to achieve alternative mitigations and efficiencies first.