Kent County Council 2025/26 Budget vs Forecast Outturn: What Q1–Q3 Reveals About Overspends in Adult Social Care and SEND

Kent County Council (KCC) agreed its 2025/26 budget in February 2025. In simple terms, it set out how much the council expected to spend day-to-day on services (social care, roads, children’s services, libraries, etc.), and how much it planned to spend on big projects (buildings, highways schemes, major IT systems).

Three “forecast outturn” reports (Quarter 1 to Quarter 3) now show how that plan is going in the real world — and the short version is: the council is spending more than it planned, mainly because social care costs are running hotter than the budget allowed, and the savings built into the February budget are not turning up fast enough. 

A 60-second jargon buster (because council finance is not normal human language)

• Revenue budget = the “weekly shopping” money: wages, care packages, repairs, contracts.

• Capital budget = the “new kitchen / extension” money: buildings, major roads work, long-term assets.

• Overspend = you’re on track to spend more than the plan.

• Savings = planned reductions in spending or extra income (the budget often relies on these).

• Reserves = the emergency pot (the council’s “rainy-day fund”).

• Capital receipts = money from selling assets (like selling a house); normally restricted, but government allows some to be used for certain one-off “change” costs.

What KCC set in February: the baseline plan

The approved 2025/26 “budget requirement” (the core day-to-day spending plan) was about £1.531bn.

The February plan also assumed a very large programme of “savings and additional income” would be delivered during the year: £96.0m (plus extra carried over from savings that didn’t fully land the year before).

That matters, because in council budgets, “savings” are not optional extras. They are often the difference between “balanced” and “overspent”.

The headline story from Q1 to Q3: the overspend grows, then plateaus

The quarterly reports track whether KCC will overspend by year-end (March 2026).

Quarter 1 (end of June 2025):

• Forecast overspend on KCC services: £27.9m (about 1.8% of the budget). 

• Plus a separate schools-related overspend (explained below): £28.6m. 

Quarter 2 (end of September 2025):

• Forecast overspend on KCC services: £46.5m (3.0%). 

• Schools-related overspend: £37.2m. 

Quarter 3 (end of November 2025):

• Forecast overspend on KCC services: £43.5m (2.8%). 

• KCC then proposes using £7.0m of capital receipts (asset-sale proceeds, allowed for certain transformation costs) which reduces the “updated” overspend to £36.5m (2.4%). 

• Schools-related overspend: £39.5m. 

The plain-English takeaway: between Q1 and Q2 the forecast got markedly worse, then between Q2 and Q3 it stopped getting worse — but it’s still very large. The Q3 report itself calls the level “unprecedented” and warns that overspends hit reserves and weaken financial resilience. 

Where the February plan is going off-track: Adult Social Care

If you want one reason the numbers have blown a hole in the budget, it’s this: Adult Social Care & Health.

• Q1 forecast: Adult social care overspend £31.0m (4.4%). 

• Q2 forecast: £50.9m (7.2%). 

• Q3 forecast: £49.7m (7.0%). 

And crucially, a big chunk of that is not “mystery inflation” — it’s savings that were in the budget, but now aren’t expected to happen this year:

• Q1: £12.1m of the overspend is linked to savings now not expected to be achieved. 

• Q2: £20.9m of the overspend is linked to savings now not expected to be achieved. 

• Q3: again £20.9m of the overspend is linked to savings now not expected to be achieved. 

The reports also point to higher-than-budgeted demand and cost in older people’s services — particularly residential care and homecare/community support.

Translated: more people needing support, more expensive support packages, and the planned “efficiency” measures not arriving quickly enough.

The other big pressure the public rarely sees: the schools/SEND “deficit”

The quarterly reports also track the Schools’ Delegated Budgets position (this is tied to the Dedicated Schools Grant, money from government that’s meant to fund schools and special educational needs support).

By Q3:

• Schools’ Delegated Budgets overspend is £39.5m, driven by demand for special educational needs (SEN) support and specialist provision. 

• The net DSG deficit is forecast to rise from £97.5m to £136.5m. 

KCC is in the Department for Education’s Safety Valve programme, which (in basic terms) is meant to help councils climb out of very large SEND deficits — including scheduled funding from DfE over time. 

Why this matters for residents: even though DSG is ring-fenced, the deficit is repeatedly described as one of the council’s biggest financial risks, and it is a looming pressure on the wider system if recovery plans fail. 

The budget’s keystone: savings were meant to do the heavy lifting — but delivery is slipping

This is where the February budget and the quarterly reality clash most clearly.

The reports explain that:

• the 2025/26 budget required £96.0m of savings and additional income;

• plus £22.4m carried over from the previous year;

• creating a monitored target of £121.5m for 2025/26. 

But delivery expectations fall as the year progresses:

• Q1: forecast delivery £102.6m (84%); shortfall £21.5m. 

• Q3: forecast delivery £97.0m (80%); shortfall £30.8m. 

In household terms: the budget assumed a lot of belt-tightening; the quarterly reports say the belt-tightening isn’t happening fast enough, so the credit card (reserves) gets used instead.

Capital spending: the “big projects” budget is drifting too — mostly through delay

Capital isn’t the same as day-to-day overspending, but it tells you something important: how deliverable the council’s plans are.

• Q1 capital programme: £358.4m, with spend to date £48.8m (13.6%). 

• Q3 capital programme: £378.8m, with spend to date £163.6m (43%). 

• Q3 forecast: £64.3m underspend, largely explained as “rephasing” (projects slipping into later years). 

“Rephasing” is basically: the project hasn’t vanished, it’s just late — which can store up problems if the work was meant to reduce future running costs.

The uncomfortable bottom line (and why the £7m matters)

The Q3 report is blunt: when the council overspends, it must fund that overspend from reserves, and drawdowns weaken resilience and create pressure to rebuild reserves in future years. 

That is why the Q3 report proposes using £7.0m of additional flexible capital receipts (asset-sale proceeds used for qualifying “transformation” spend) to reduce the overspend to £36.5m. 

It’s also worth noting that the budget framework already included flexible use of capital receipts for eligible costs (including Oracle Cloud costs) — in other words, the February plan already relied on some one-off fixes and timing bridges.

Put all that together and the layperson’s verdict is clear: KCC’s February plan depended on big savings being delivered on time. The Q1–Q3 reports show those savings slipping, while social care demand pushes spending up. The council is now using emergency measures and tighter spending controls to stop the situation getting worse.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime