Peterborough council’s £2m budget overspend after rise in children’s services demand

Cabinet member for finance Cllr David Seaton, speaking to members at Monday’s Cabinet meeting, said: “The final overspend figure for the last financial year 2018/19 was £2.119 million, which was mostly due to increase demand from children’s services.

“We had more than 40 plus additional children over the year placed in our care one way or another, and including placement costs this accounted for much of the overspend.

“Other areas where we overspent were costs involving our partnership with Serco, the delivery of the Amey contract extension prior to the mobilisation of Peterborough Limited, and the underachievement of income from parking services.

“In January we had reported the overspend could be as high as £3.4 million for the financial year, but I am pleased to inform the Cabinet that figure has been substantially lowered.

“The £2.119 million additional resources will be found from the capacity building reserve fund.

“That said, we are still statistically well below the average overspend of our geographical neighbours in Northampton, Luton and Milton Keynes.”

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service