A social worker team has been slashed and improvement money cut as the council aims to tackle its £12 million overspend.

Medway aims to make more than £600,000 in savings by ending a temporary social work project team in January and cancelling other posts in the children’s services department.

It says that due to hard work of staff, the work of the project team will end three months earlier than predicted, saving £250,000.

Cutbacks such as delaying the recruitment of a head of improvement and a social work manager, and scrapping one social work manager post altogether will save the authority a further £365,000.

The report also says the council has made savings due to vacancies that remain unfilled.

There are 22 uncovered job roles in children’s services that, in combination with the freezing of recruitment for other posts have meant the council has underspent by just over £1 million.

Services to support children across Medway will have to make do with less as the council seeks to reduce the £12 million budget pressure.

A revenue budget monitoring report at the children and young people (CYP) overview and scrutiny committee outlined ways the service was trying to make savings before February.

The predicted overspend for children and adult services for this year has reduced to £10.8 million in the latest round of budget monitoring, coming down by £1.7 million.

Councillors also heard the children and adult services need to make £22.6 million in cutbacks in order to stay within next year’s budget.

While the council is looking for savings, since 2019 the budget for children’s services has increased following an “inadequate” rating from Ofsted.

For 2020/21, £7 million was added to the gross budget, £9 million added for 2021/22, £6 million for 2022/23, and a further £10 million added for 2023/24.

Referring to the necessary savings needed before February and for the next year, Cllr Smitha Campbell (Lab) said: “I understand that no statutory services will be cut, but there must be something that’s sacrificed here.

“I’m really concerned it will impact the lives of children in Medway.”

Katey Durkin, chief finance officer, said the £22.6 million figure for next year’s budget was significant but may be revised down as more up-to-date data are used.

She said: “That gap is arrived at by a series of projections, at a point in time we looked at what our current caseload looked like, what those placements were costing us, what our current staffing position looked like and what that was costing us.

“There’s lots of work under way at the moment to review those original projections against more up-to-date data, to see if any of those are over-projections.

“It’s possible some of those projections are higher than they need to be or will be in reality.”

She also said that they were working to capitalise on the children’s services’ improved Ofsted rating to attract more permanent staff in order to reduce reliance on expensive agency workers.

In some areas the pressures have intensified, with the cost of children’s legal services increasing by almost £200,000 from the last review in October.

“It’s possible some of those projections are higher than they need to be or will be in reality.”

This is partially due to predicted efficiencies not yet having been made and the need for expert assessments of the needs of children.

But there is good news, as the council has managed to get partners to cough up funding for support packages to the tune of almost £1 million.

These reductions are a consequence of the authority’s need to eliminate the £12 million overspend in order to avoid a section 114 order - declaring effective bankruptcy and turning the running of the council over to central government.

Medway Council has also been working with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) to review all of the authority’s services and find efficiency savings where possible.