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22
Oct 2024
North Yorkshire Council spending more than £1 million on care for some individuals
North Yorkshire Council is now spending more than £1 million on some individual care packages, it was revealed today.
Deputy leader Gareth Dadd included the figure in a speech that laid bare the financial difficulties facing the council at the opening of the Local Government Association’s annual conference at Harrogate Convention Centre.
Cllr Dadd said the council’s accumulated deficit for helping children with special educational needs and disabilities was expected to top £90 million by March 2028.
He urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to prioritise council funding and SEND in next week’s Budget.
Cllr Dadd said:
Something has to give and reform, alongside changes to funding, is essential.
We face an unrelenting demand for care for older people, working age adults and the young. There is not enough capacity in the market or internally, so prices are rocketing at the expense of the taxpayer.
Individual packages of care for over £1m per annum are now becoming a more regular feature. By March 2028, we estimate the accumulated deficit for providing SEND will be in excess of £90 million, which will be sitting incidentally on our balance sheet waiting for government to sort out both the system and the money.
Cllr Dadd said North Yorkshire Council was in an “enviable” position compared with many other councils because local government reorganisation last year enabled it to save millions of pounds compared with the old two-tier system of local government in the country.
He said:
We are the first council ever to successfully pursue unitary status and devolution at the same time. As the deputy leader and executive member for resources, I can tell you straight that these have delivered us huge financial wins at a critical time for local government.
Even so, the council’s annual deficit is now estimated to be in excess of £48 million by March 2027.
It had been estimated that we could achieve savings of between £30 million and £69 million per annum and as we reach midpoint in our second year, we already have a plan to deliver around £40 million of that by March 2026. However, despite these savings this has still left us with that predicted £48 million annual deficit.
Cllr Dadd said “reorganisation can also be a catalyst to doing things differently and more creatively as we now have all the council levers in one place” and added that without local government reorganisation, “I genuinely struggle to see how we would be able to wrestle with the pressures that we face”.
Turning to the Budget on October 30, he said:
I sincerely hope that SEND and core council finances in particular will feature heavily in the Chancellor’s budget next week. We all need a sustainable long-term funding plan without delay.
LGA chair Louise Gittins told the conference it had carried out a survey which revealed a quarter of councils were likely to request exceptional financial support from the government in the next two years.
She said it was “essential that government writes off high needs debts as a matter of urgency”.
Cllr Gittins, who leads Labour-controlled Cheshire West and Chester Council, said an LGA survey also revealed 73% of councillors had experienced abuse or intimidation in the last year, and said they should be able to withhold their addresses from the public because of this.
The three-day conference, which is being attended by 1,600 delegates, ends on Thursday, when Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is due to speak.
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