Southend Council now forecasts a £13.291m overspend for 2026/27, and 97% of it is children's and adult social care. Grants are paused and vacancies held.

Southend-on-Sea City Council is £13.291m over budget four months into the financial year. Almost all of it is care. Around 97% of the forecast pressure sits in statutory children’s and adult social care (Finance Performance Report to end of July 2026, Southend-on-Sea City Council).

The figure is a forecast for the whole of 2026/27, not money already spent. It is measured against a revised budget of £202.570m, and the report calls it around 3% of the council’s gross expenditure. The council published it on 25 August, ahead of scrutiny on 2 September and Cabinet on 7 September.

It is also the second year running. The council ended 2025/26 £12.0m overspent.

Southend Council forecast budget variance by portfolio, 2026/27 Bar chart. Social Care and Healthier Communities is forecast £7.104m over budget, Children and SEND £5.582m over, Finance and Transport £0.957m over, Regeneration and LGR £0.696m over, Civic Pride £0.220m over. Corporate budgets are £0.583m under and Technology, Learning and Customer Services £0.400m under. Where Southend's £13.291m overspend sits Forecast variance against budget at 31 July 2026, by portfolio, £m 0 Social Care & Healthier Communities +7.104 Children and SEND +5.582 Finance and Transport +0.957 Regeneration and LGR +0.696 Civic Pride +0.220 Technology and Customer Services -0.400 Corporate budgets -0.583 Source: Southend-on-Sea City Council, Finance Performance Report 2026/27 to end of July 2026 (Period 4). Smaller portfolios omitted. Graphic by Southend Today

The two portfolios doing the damage

Two portfolios account for £12.686m of the £13.874m services total:

  • Social Care and Healthier Communities: £7.104m over. Older people’s care packages are £3.5m over on their own. Care for people with physical or sensory impairments is £1.9m over. Mental health care packages are £1.8m over, after £0.702m of assumed NHS contributions. Learning disability packages add a net £0.5m.
  • Children and SEND: £5.582m over. Externally commissioned placements are about 90% of that.

The report is unusually blunt about individual costs. One children’s residential placement now costs more than £1m a year. Eight more cost over £500,000 each. Against that, focused scrutiny of placements has already cut around £2.9m from this year’s costs, and the average annual cost of a residential placement has been held at about £380,000, in line with last year.

Why the numbers moved

A separate paper for the same scrutiny meeting sets out the demand behind the money (Finances and budget pressures, Adults and Children’s Social Care).

On the children’s side, as at 13 August 2026:

  • 321 children are in the council’s care
  • 60 of them are in a placement costing more than £3,000 a week
  • 44 are in residential children’s homes and 44 in supported accommodation
  • 113 are with independent fostering agencies, 81 with in-house foster carers
  • one child is in a secure placement

On the adults’ side the pressure is volume. New referrals for care rose from 9,140 in 2024/25 to 12,744 in 2025/26, a 39.4% increase. Contacts in the first quarter of this year were up nearly 80% on the same quarter of 2024/25. Safeguarding referrals are up 29.8%. Between April and July alone, another 194 people met the statutory threshold for Care Act support. As at 13 August, 3,238 people were receiving care and support from the council.

One shift matters more than it sounds. Client contributions are covering 31% of the gross cost of older people’s care, down from 34% at the same point last year, which the council puts at roughly £1.5m less income. That reflects people running down savings until the council picks up the bill. The report says officers will look at whether the depletion of self-funders’ assets can be modelled in advance, so the cost is visible before it lands.

The report also notes that Southend is not a high spender by national comparison. On net spend per person aged 18 and over it ranks 117th of 151 councils, in the bottom quarter.

What it means for you

Most of this is invisible from a front door. Some of it is not.

  • Grants to local groups are on hold. New discretionary grants from the Community Investment Fund have been paused, releasing about £0.2m. Grants already approved will still be paid.
  • Jobs are being left empty on purpose. Vacancies are being held across the customer service centre, learning and workforce development, commissioning, housing and regulatory teams, and five posts in the finance, council tax, business rates and benefits service.
  • The bin contract is costing more than planned. A survey after the contract was let found more properties had to stay on weekly sacks than assumed, worth about £0.46m. Residual waste disposal is another £0.21m over, and the council says it is trying to stop commercial waste entering the household stream.
  • Garden waste income is £0.13m short of what the contract assumed, which is the background to the subscription checks the council ran this month.
  • Pier income is £0.2m below budget, which the council blames on extreme weather cutting early-summer visitor numbers.
  • Cemetery and crematorium income is about £0.35m below target.
  • Homelessness is up. 17% more families have been placed in temporary accommodation this year, pushing the council into more expensive nightly-let and bed and breakfast rooms at a forecast cost of £0.38m.

There is no suggestion in the report that council tax will change mid-year. It cannot. What the report does say is that reserves cannot keep absorbing this: “Reserves provide financial resilience but cannot fund recurring statutory pressures indefinitely.” Our guide to what you currently pay is at Southend council tax bands.

What is protecting the position

The council went into this year with more money set aside than it has ever held. The unallocated General Fund Reserve was raised to £12m, and specific social care risk reserves of £2.5m for children’s and £1m for adults were created in the February budget. Of the £6.050m of savings and income initiatives approved for this year, about 80%, or £4.836m, has already been delivered, with none rated red.

The council leader, Cllr Daniel Cowan, said in the council’s own announcement: “No one is underestimating the challenge we face, but we aren’t waiting to act,” and added that “local taxpayers simply cannot continue carrying the can for social care markets that are fundamentally broken.” The Cabinet Member for Finance and Transport, Cllr Paul Collins, said the problem “is not a lack of financial control but that statutory social care service demands are outpacing available budgeted funding” (Southend-on-Sea City Council).

The dates to watch

  • 2 September: the Policy and Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee takes both reports at 6.30pm, with a presentation on the July position (agenda).
  • Week beginning 7 September: budget challenge sessions begin with the leader and portfolio holders for each directorate.
  • 7 September: Cabinet is asked to note the position, approve £15,111,438 of budget transfers, and formally press the government and the Local Government Association on social care market failure.
  • 28 October: the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, which the report says may have important implications for the council’s planning.
  • November: the Period 6 update goes to Cabinet with a refreshed forecast to 2030/31.

The medium-term picture is the part worth remembering. The council’s own strategy, agreed in February, already assumes a £28.5m budget gap by 2030/31, starting with £9.0m in 2027/28. Five of the adult transitions counted in this year’s figures are expected to cost a further £1.7m in a full year from 2027/28.