The Labour administration is depending on a bailout from government to balance its next budget, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Cabinet member for finance Dana Carlin (left) and Lib Dem group leader Luke Cawley-Harrison (right)

Haringey Council’s financial future remains in doubt as bosses await news from the goverment on whether a request for a bailout will be successful.

On Tuesday (February 11th), the council’s cabinet met to recommend approval of the draft 2025/26 budget, which is now set to be agreed at a full council meeting on 5th March.

However, the council has said it will not be in a position to set a balanced budget for the upcoming year without an assumed £37million in exceptional financial support (EFS) from the government. The council will only know if the amount has been agreed at the end of February.

EFS is a mechanism allowing councils to use capital receipts or extra borrowing to cover their day-to-day spending for a set period of time.

The council has also made an application for financial support in-year, as well as the next year, but could not confirm the figure needed for the current year.

Council leader Peray Ahmet said last month she was “confident” the EFS request would be granted.

However, Liberal Democrat group leader Luke Cawley-Harrison criticised the cabinet member for finance, Dana Carlin, for her response to the financial situation, describing the pressures as “not new information”, adding they had been “coming for a long time”.

He said: “In the last week the chief executive [Andy Donald] has announced the convening of three new emergency financial recovery groups. Why as the lead cabinet member and a part of this council’s leadership were you not forming these groups a year ago?

“You have access to the weekly, monthly, and quarterly budget monitoring, this is not new information that hasn’t been coming for a long time. Were you caught unaware?”

Cllr Carlin said the council thought it had put “enough money” into adult social care, an area under pressure. She said the council had put an additional £20m into the 2024/25 budget for adult social care and did the same the year before.

She said: “We absolutely were not expecting the level of need and the increased numbers and complexity of need.”

Cllr Carlin added that temporary accommodation costs similarly were “not predicted” and that “all local authorities” were “caught in the same way”.

Insisting the position the council was in was “exceptional” and not “just to do with Haringey”, she concluded the situation was not due to any of the councils being “relaxed”.

In a report presented at the meeting, Haringey has forecasted £30.9m of financial pressure due to adult social care costs for 2025/26, and £12m for temporary accommodation.

Liberal Democrat councillor Pippa Connor gave a summary of recommendations from the scrutiny panels, including the overview and scrutiny committee (OSC), adults and health, and housing placemaking and development.

She said the OSC had “repeatedly” made recommendations for quarterly financial performance and risk reports for “all panels” on the council’s revenue and capital budgets.

Cllr Connor warned a recent KPMG audit report, released on 27th January, had found the budget monitoring process and associated committee scrutiny insufficient when it came to identifying and analysing pressure for 2023/24.

She said: “The committee [OSC] expressed concern that there was very limited information available in the budget scrutiny papers on what specific savings proposals actually involved in this year’s budget.

“This led to the need for additional discussion at the meeting in order to understand them properly. This lack of detailed information made it very difficult to make recommendations.”

Cllr Carlin thanked the scrutiny panel for its recommendations, which the council responded to more fully in a report, but reiterated the position the council was in financially was “not unique”.

Defending the council, she explained pressures were driven by a “combination of increased demand and increased cost” in particular adult social care and temporary accommodation.

The finance chief said: “Our housing needs team is exemplary in actually preventing homelessness, in ensuring households that are about to become homeless are removed seamlessly from one property into another, or we work with the landlord to keep them in the property they’re in.”

Cllr Carlin also reminded cabinet that the core grant funding available from government for Haringey to deliver services and meet the needs of residents was around £143m less in real terms than it was in 2010/11.

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