SHROPSHIRE Council is predicted an overspend of at least £4.1million with inflation, rising energy costs and the growing demand for council services.

The first quarterly monitoring report of the council's finances anticipates inflation adding an extra £5 million to the cost of running services and extra demand for council services – particularly for children’s social care and safeguarding.

The extra requests for council services are predicted to increase further as the living pressures increase, adding almost another £7 million.

Ahead of next week's Cabinet meeting. Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for finance, said: "Just as households face very big increases in costs, we’re also facing a really tough year with rising fuel and contract costs, but we remain focused on delivering our priorities set out in our Shropshire Plan."

The council is no longer receiving money from Government to counterbalance the Covid impacts, although there are still many services experiencing the effects of the pandemic, more demand for social care, reinforced by extra pressures on the NHS.

That, and the growing costs in children's social care, is forcing the predicted overspend this year up between the best case scenario of £4.1m and the worst case of £18.8m.

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One of the signs of pressure on the services, can be seen in the number of children in care in April 2022, which was 53 per cent higher than in April 2020 and is up 21 per cent year on year.

Such placements, that help ensure children are kept safe, can be hugely expensive for councils.

Cllr Butler added: "The combination of inflation and growing demand for our services, linked to a number of factors, means we are now working hard to identify how we can quickly close the overspend gap between now and next April, while we are also looking at difficult decisions on what we can stop doing to help to make the savings we must find."

The report, which will be discussed at next week's meeting, also shows that the council will have to sell off more capital assets, including reducing its number of offices by April 2023.

That is one the many measures put in place to help ease the pressure put on the unitary authority.

Cllr Butler commented: "We are working on these now with moves such as the rationalisation of our office accommodation, and initiatives such as our Stepping Stones project reducing the costs of supporting children in care while improving their care experience, which we hope will save us just under £2 million this year alone."