Bracknell council adds spending freezes to reduce £6m overspend

The most recent financial reports indicate the council could be £6 million over budget by March 2020 following huge spending on social care.

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This means chiefs have been forced to tell staff to put an end to spending on non-critical maintenance and non-essential items.

Job vacancies will “be carefully looked at” to see if BFC can delay filling the gap to save money, but essential posts will still be filled, according to Chief Executive Timothy Wheadon.

He told the News: “Like many local authorities across the country, we are facing unprecedented demands and rising costs across a range of our services.

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“This is particularly acute this year in our essential social care services, so we are putting measures in place to help us respond to the challenge.”

But BFC has already used all £2.5 million of its annual contingency money to claw back the overspend, and bosses say new measures have shrunk the projected deficit to £500,000 by March 2020.

This means the authority will have to identify a further half-a-million pounds in savings in the next four months.

“We are proud of our record of never having exceeded our budget since becoming a unitary council in 1998.

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“By acting in this way with five months of the financial year remaining, we expect to maintain that enviable record.”

A BFC budget report from February highlighted “central government grant funding is the lowest it has been for decades and demand pressures are increasing”.

Lorna Cameron, Bracknell’s branch secretary for Unison, laid the blame for the overspend at the door of central policies.

She told the News: “We have to put it into context.

“This is not Bracknell Forest’s issue - it is the consequence of big government’s decisions.”