Temporary housing, children’s services and social care are all still causing significant cost pressures in Haringey, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

George Meehan House and (inset) Dana Carlin — George Meehan House and (inset) cabinet member for finance Dana Carlin

Haringey Council is set to blow its budget by £20million this year unless “substantial work” takes place to cut costs.

Dana Carlin, the council’s cabinet member for finance, warned that “ongoing increases” in the cost of housing demand and social care placements had contributed to the £20m forecasted overspend for 2024/25.

A report on the council’s first quarter finances projected a £9.7m pressure on adult social care, £4.8m on temporary accommodation, and £4.2m on children’s services.

Addressing a cabinet meeting at George Meehan House in Wood Green yesterday (Tuesday 17th) Cllr Carlin reiterated this was “only the quarter one report” and “substantial work” was being undertaken by officers to reduce the overspend by the end of the year.

She said: “In light of this, there can be no slippage in the delivery of our agreed savings programme, and I’ll be working with colleagues supporting officers in keeping these savings on track.

“It’s imperative we look across all our spending to ensure every pound counts and all available funding is directed to supporting our priorities and our residents.”

The report highlighted that the £20m shortfall was despite “considerable efforts” to “forecast and provide” for 2024/25 cost pressures during the budget-setting period at the start of the year.

This saw £25.4m added to the adults, health and communities area, which included housing demand and children’s services budgets, and a further £8.7m provided to address “inflation, borrowing and rightsizing budgets”.

Cllr Carlin said: “Unfortunately Haringey, like many boroughs, and especially those in outer London, has been underfunded by the government for the last decade and a half and the ‘Fair Funding Review’ is long overdue.

“Haringey is considered an outer London borough for funding purposes but it has all the pressures of an inner London borough.”

The Fair Funding Review, which has been delayed, is a review by the central government to ensure a fairer formula for allocation of funding.

Liberal Democrat councillor Scott Emery asked about the “potential additional, as yet unquantified risks” listed in the report, in particular a “potential requirement to increase the council’s bad debt provisions”.

Taryn Eves, the council’s director of finance, said the bullet points represented “some of the risks” the council faced for the remainder of the year.

“In terms of bad debt provisions that is usually an estimate or a figure we calculate at the year. The process we’re taking this year is to take a view at quarter two, rather than leaving until the end of the year.”

An “urgent” category for housing repairs has been introduced, cabinet member for housing and planning Sarah Williams told the meeting, while presenting a report on repairs policy.

She said: “This will sit alongside the emergency and priority categories. An emergency will be responded to within 24 hours, and urgent repair will be responded to within seven days, and a priority within 28 days.”

Cllr Emery said the timescales addressed the “speed” repairs would be attended “but not how quickly they should be fixed”.

He added: “Often repairs are done quite poorly and often have to be redone, how will you ensure the quality is better going forward?”

Cllr Williams said: “Not every repair is very simple and it might require specialist parts, we have a very complex stock, it might be a garage door that was manufactured some time ago; you couldn’t necessarily guarantee a timespan for getting a spare part like that.

“Our commitment is to leave things in a state that can be left whilst we await the substantive repair but it would be impossible to always guarantee those supply chain issues.”

To ensure repairs were “right the first time and to sufficient standard” Jahedur Rahman, director of housing, added: “On average we do about 55,000 repairs a year. What we have committed to do is taking a sample size and doing post inspection surveys.”

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