The cost of Covid: Dorset Council in better financial position than other local authorities

Despite overspends Dorset Council is said to be in a better financial position than most.

The council’s auditor says the authority has done well to cope with its first year in business and the uncertainty the pandemic has caused, adding an extra £60m to its costs.

But there has been criticisms of the additional money needed to be put into both children’s and adult’s services – between them amounting to an extra £18million which had to be found to meet demand which was not anticipated at the start of the financial year.

Dorchester councillor Richard Biggs says that the under-estimating of what is actually needed for both services has continued year after year in the new council as it had in the previous Dorset County Council.

Similar criticism was made by Weymouth councillor, Green party group leader, Cllr Clare Sutton. She said while she understood that demand was not constant she could not work out why, year after year, the council started the financial year with a budget figure for both services and then had to come back and increase both by considerable amounts.

The auditor report had commented that there are still questions about whether children’s services offered value for money.

Executive director Aidan Dunn, who oversees the finance brief, admitted that the council had still not worked out exactly how best to guess future demand.

He said that the problem was that, literally overnight, the council might have to take a family of children into its care in unforeseen circumstances, which could instantly blow a £1million hole in the budget.

Monday’s audit and governance committee heard that the council was expected to end its first financial year, 19/20, with total assets of £1.3billion and £28.2million in its general fund with another £86.2m in earmarked reserved.

Some of these reserves will have to be used to meet the additional costs of Covid which has not been met by Government grants and the continuing, unknown, costs of the pandemic.

Said chief financial officer Jim McManus: “The continuing impact of coronavirus means that the future remains very challenging for us.”

But auditor Ian House from Deloittes said the council had managed to produce what he described as “a good set of account in difficult circumstances” and was likely to have the draft audit signed off in time at the end of this month.

“Compared to many other authorities we think you are in a reasonable position…there are still many council accounts not signed off across the country,” he said.