CONCERNS have been raised over whether planned cuts in Northumberland County Council’s social care budget can be achieved.

This year’s budget, which was agreed in February, included £3m in savings from care management costs in each of the next three years, achieved by a review of existing packages of care.

However, at Monday’s meeting of the council’s corporate services and economic growth overview and scrutiny committee, Cllr Nick Oliver pointed out that there was already a significant shortfall in this year’s budget for the same costs.

Cllr Oliver said: “There is a £3.5m overspend in adult social care commissioning.

"The reason given is the high level of savings target allocated to this area.

“That doesn’t seem to be a legitimate reason. That savings target was presumably agreed when the budget was set.

"Do we have the same risk with the budget that was agreed in February?”

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Cllr Oliver was speaking on a report that outlined the council’s financial performance up to the end of last year. The council’s finance director, Jan Willis, explained the reasons behind the shortfall in savings.

She said: “The team that normally carry out these reviews, to make sure people are receiving the right level of service, had been redeployed to plug gaps in domiciliary care services where we have had real difficulties.

“We’ve had particular difficulties in the west of the county. We have had discussions about whether it was sensible to build in a continued savings target and it was felt that there was scope for doing so.”

The report also pointed out that the shortfall was “partially offset by
underspends across other areas of Adult Services in particular within employee costs as a result of the high level of vacant posts”.

The report also identified a forecasted overspend of just over £1.5m in the most recent financial year – a significant drop on the £17m that was previously feared in September.

Ms Willis added: “We have seen some real inflationary pressures and we have had to work very hard to get the forecasted overspend down.

"The overspend was mainly due to the energy price increase and the cost of the pay award, which was significantly higher than we anticipated at the time we set the budget.”