THE council plans to make another £17.5 million of spending cuts over the next four years.

Herefordshire Council has already made £87 million of savings since 2010 and has released its next spending cuts between 2017/18 to 2020/21 financial years as part of its mid-year corporate budget and performance report.

By the end of September 2017, the revenue outturn for 2017/18 was projected to be a £2.972m overspend, broken down into the following directorates:

Adult’s Wellbeing is projected to overspend by £641k due to the demands of adult social care provision. This includes the assumed allocation of £2.5m from the government’s Better Care Fund towards meeting the county’s adult social care needs.

Children’s Wellbeing continues to face immense pressure and is projected to overspend by £2.33m. This is due to providing care for an unexpectedly high number of looked after children and meeting children’s safeguarding needs, including complex disability cases

From the 2017/18 capital budget, a net overspend of £342k has been forecast although measures have been identified to address this, especially in light of the unauthorised capital spend on the Blueschool House refurbishment.

Herefordshire Council is working with the Local Government Association to review governance, and the Audit and Governance Committee will oversee measures to ensure the robustness of internal control processes and officer compliance with those processes.