Newsroom Archive

This comes as the Council has to find between £45 - £50 million of cuts over the next four years, as cuts in Government grant continue to bite.

The additional spend on Children’s Services including Safeguarding is highlighted in a report to the Council’s cabinet, showing that £4.9 million extra will be spent this year above what the Council had originally budgeted for this service.

One of the reasons for this is rising numbers of children in care, reflecting a trend seen by councils across the UK.

The Council will use contingency funds and savings from effective treasury management to meet these additional costs.

The report also highlights that Telford & Wrekin continues to face overspends in the other key area of adult social care, however it has already earmarked additional funding to support this area.

For both adult social care and children’s safeguarding cost improvement plans are in place to help reduce these services’ costs in the longer term and make the cuts in a gradual and managed way.

Cllr Lee Carter, Cabinet lead for Finance, said; “We have always said that protecting the most vulnerable in the borough is our top priority

“We have always said that we will spend what we have to to ensure that children are kept as safe as possible and this report shows that we are good to that commitment.

 “This is on top of us making no cuts in Children’s Safeguarding’s budget this year, at a time when every other service is being cut back.

“In the meantime, despite the extreme pressures we are under, we expect to again be in budget by the end of the year, thanks to our careful financial management.

“This is however an increasingly difficult task. We are expending significant energy to try and get the Government to see that enough is enough.”

The report will be considered by the Cabinet when it meets on 13 October.