SEND, social care and roads funding still an issue for Derbyshire County Council - report
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.
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 overspend in children’s services and £8.8 million 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.
While financial forecasts improved throughout the year in other departments, they worsened for social services.
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 to £6.3 million.
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.
It says the number of EHC Plans currently being assessed has surged from 998 to 1,449.
The council says there has been a “marked improvement” in the average time, reducing to 26 weeks – six weeks above the legal timescale – which remains below target.
It says a backlog of educational psychologist support for these plans should be cleared by the end of this academic year.
A large part of the children’s services pressure is linked to home to school transport services, which the council is aiming to reduce through “better route planning”.
It is also moving the travel to school services department – and its £37 million budget – out of children’s services into the “place” department”, which includes highways services.
Council officials have now repeatedly highlighted a core impending issue on the horizon for the county authority or its replacement to solve.
This is the ongoing special educational needs deficit, which the Government has allowed councils to effectively keep off the books and instead merely detail in its reserves and not pay for.
In February, the Labour government said it would cover 90 percent of this £5 billion national deficit, but that councils would have to cover the remaining 10 percent of the money it has gathered and not paid up until March 2026.
For the county council, this would involve the authority needing to find an additional £9.3 million, after years of making millions of pounds in savings and with fresh substantial options in short supply, while maintaining statutory services.
In relation to road maintenance, council officials say: “Performance has continued to improve over the year, but a number of challenges remain.
“Increased levels of repair and resurfacing activity reflect both improved delivery and the continued pressure on the highway network.
“Overall, whilst progress is evident, the service continues to manage significant demand, seasonal pressures and the complexity of transformation, all of which will require sustained focus going forward.”
The new finance reports also reveal that the upcoming Tour De France Femmes cycling race leading through Derbyshire on Saturday, July 31, 2027, will cost the council half a million pounds due to “significant planning needs”.
It also says council staff redundancies linked to eight care homes which the authority had proposed to sell but has instead closed, are set to cost it up to £3.3 million.
The council must maintain a minimum of £25 million in reserves, officials detail, and the current level sits at £37 million, down from £39.5 million last year.
It says it continues to aim for between £19.2 million and £42.7 million in savings through a major restructure of the council’s operational model, from 2028, when the authority is set to be abolished.
The council made £35.2 million in cutbacks in the last financial year.
Cllr Lawson said: “This is a tremendous achievement involving all teams at all levels across the council and it is satisfying to see that we are leading a well-run, prudent council which is delivering vital services to our residents while cutting out waste and ensuring efficiency is at the core of all that we do.
“The forecast position improved greatly in the last three months of the financial year and this is down to hard work, careful planning and scrutinising every pound spent.
“Although cost and demand pressures remain, especially in our adult and children’s services, this achievement means we have started the new financial year positively, knowing that we have the right mechanisms in place to ensure effective financial control.
“We owe it to the council tax payers of Derbyshire to ensure we keep balancing the books while providing quality services to our residents who rely on them.
“This report demonstrates that we achieved what we set out to achieve last year. However, we are not resting on our laurels and will continue to strive for improvements at the same time as minimising spend wherever possible.”