Kent County Council could be forced to make “painful” decisions on some services if it fails to get a grip on a £12.4m budget overspend.

The warning came from a senior Conservative councillor after a report revealed KCC’s latest financial position and described it as “a real cause for concern.”

The county council is trying to save £81m from its budget this year but faces an equally difficult budget next year, when further savings on a similar scale will be needed.

Cllr Susan Carey (Con), the county council’s deputy finance spokesman, said there were several key areas where KCC was spending too much.

These included a £5.2m overspend in looking after vulnerable children; a £3.8m overspend in looking after vulnerable adults and uncertainty over take up of a new young person’s travel pass, which has replaced the Freedom Pass.

The cost of dealing with waste has also risen, with the council saying that it has had to deal with a higher than expected amount of rubbish - partly caused by storm damage and a warm summer leading to more garden waste.

Cllr Carey said: “It is not unusual to be reporting an overspend but the level of it is worrying.

"We need to look very carefully at those areas of expenditure to recover the situation... there is no doubt we will have to make savings and if we do not, we may need to make savings in areas that are even more painful.”

“It is not unusual to be reporting an overspend but the level of it is worrying" - Cllr Susan Carey

She added: “We are going to have to address a very challenging period to make savings this year.”

However, KCC said frontline services would not be affected and council managers had already identified where £7m could be saved and other savings, such as the streetlight switch off, had cushioned the impact.

Opposition Labour finance spokesman Cllr Derek Smyth said the blame lay with the coalition’s public spending squeeze.

“Local government has been singled out for the severest cuts by the coalition and there is no sign of any let up. There will be some difficult decisions to take.”