Every Penny Counts? Kent Councillors Reject Urgent Review Amid £19.8m Children’s Care Overspend

“Can anyone explain to me why these very expensive contracts shouldn’t be reviewed, as mr. Rayner suggested.”

It was a straightforward question from Liberal Democrat councillor Antony Hook. Kent County Council was forecasting a £19.8 million overspend on placements for children in care. Residential placement costs had increased by 23%. And councillors had just heard that those costs could climb on Friday afternoons, precisely when a child might urgently need somewhere safe.

Conservative councillor Harry Rayner wanted the contracts examined urgently by an appropriate group of elected members. Green councillor Mark Hood backed him.

Reform UK councillor Jeremy Eustice objected: “I think right now that’s not appropriate, so we’re not minded to support that.”

The committee voted. The recommendation failed.

Nobody was proposing to cancel care contracts or remove children from placements. Councillors were being asked to recommend closer scrutiny of public spending. Against Reform UK’s repeated promises to watch every penny, the decision deserves an explanation.

A costly shortage of choices

KCC’s first-quarter financial report forecast an overall £21.4 million revenue overspend for 2026/27. Within that, looked-after children’s care and support placements were forecast to exceed their budget by £19.8 million. That’s not the same as the £13 million net overspend across the whole children’s directorate, which includes savings and underspends elsewhere.

The report says residential placement costs rose 23% between March 2025 and March 2026. Kent had around 70 more children in care than a year earlier and too few foster carers to meet demand. Consequently, more children required residential care, much of it provided by private operators. Two of four new council-run children’s homes were also expected to open later than planned, reducing this year’s anticipated savings by nearly £1 million.

Christine McInnes, KCC’s Corporate Director of Children, Young People and Education, explained that a more recent spike of roughly 50 children entering care appeared to be easing. She said commissioning officers had negotiated average placement costs back towards where they were a year previously.

It’s an important defence. The council isn’t doing nothing, and circumstances can force even careful commissioners into expensive decisions.

But one detail jumped out.

“Our data analysis shows that costs go up on Friday afternoons”, McInnes told the committee.

She explained that expensive placements were reviewed on Monday mornings to reduce costs. Officers also challenged providers where the council was paying for more than it received.

The chairman called it “a kind of easy jet algorithm of the most demanding moment at which we require care”.

Except we’re not booking a weekend flight. These are vulnerable children who can’t be told to wait until Monday for a better price.

The meeting supplied no figures for Friday premiums, how frequently they occur or what Monday reviews save. Nor does McInnes’s statement prove providers deliberately exploit emergencies.

Those are questions worth investigating, not conclusions to invent.

What did DOLGE actually save?

Rayner turned to KCC’s Department for Local Government Efficiency — DOLGE — created under Reform UK to scrutinise costs and find savings.

Had the team examined the 23% rise? And if so, what had it achieved?

Deputy Leader Brian Collins said “extensive talks have gone on with myself and our Doge team over the placements”.

Rayner challenged whether the outcome demonstrated an effective efficiency operation. Collins rejected what he regarded as political point-scoring, saying the team was “working very effectively, and probably more productively than our predecessors”.

But no specific DOLGE saving from children’s residential placements was quantified in the exchange.

That doesn’t prove DOLGE has failed. The 23% increase covers an earlier period and McInnes described progress in negotiating down average costs. It does mean councillors weren’t given a figure with which to test Collins’s claim.

Rayner proposed referring the placement arrangements to the Contract Management Review Group. He called them “ripe for examination at an appropriate committee”.

When asked whether that would happen, the response was that a referral hadn’t been considered but could be. An officer emphasised: “Yeah, we’re absolutely committed to openness and transparency”.

Rayner pressed for an urgent recommendation. Officials pointed out that the existing contract-review arrangements were themselves being reconsidered, so an appropriate member review group could undertake the work instead.

The request was modest. Recommend a review. Let elected members inspect the evidence and determine whether the contracting arrangements deliver value without compromising children’s care.

The argument over scrutiny

As the debate drew towards a vote, Eustice said “we’re not minded to support that”.

Hood questioned that collective “we”, reminding colleagues: “We do not sit here as representatives of our political groups.”

Then Hook asked the question with which this story began: why shouldn’t these expensive contracts be reviewed?

The counterargument wasn’t entirely without substance. Officers were already checking individual placements, challenging excessive costs and reporting that prices were improving. The chairman suggested that the committee could revisit the matter after the next quarterly financial report. Senior officers outlined other routes for member oversight.

But day-to-day management by paid officers isn’t identical to an urgent review by elected representatives. One negotiates and manages the contracts; the other tests whether those arrangements are working and reports its findings.

During an increasingly prickly exchange, Eustice told another member: “It’s your problem.”

The chairman called that unhelpful.

Eventually, the proposed recommendation was read out. It asked for the contracts relating to looked-after children’s care and support placements to be reviewed urgently by an appropriate member review group.

The chairman clarified that this would only be a recommendation to the Cabinet member, not a binding order.

Hood requested a recorded vote. The chairman called for those in favour and those against.

“It did not pass.”

What does the public get to see?

The decision came less than a week after a KCC Governance and Audit Committee meeting at which external auditors presented three red assessments of the council’s value-for-money arrangements. As Shepway Vox reported on 16 October, residents couldn’t follow that meeting live online. The recording of that meeting is still not published.

These events don’t prove Reform councillors deliberately want information concealed. But the outcome on 21 October is plain: an urgent member review that might have put costly care contracts under closer public examination wasn’t recommended.

It matters because the council’s own scrutiny papers say councillors should challenge spending decisions and test how effectively public resources are used.

Nobody disputes that finding suitable homes for children can be expensive. Nobody should pretend the cheapest placement is necessarily the right one. And officers deserve credit where they’ve successfully negotiated costs down.

But the questions remain.

How much more are Friday placements costing? Which contracts carry the greatest pressures? What precisely has DOLGE saved? What evidence supports the claim that the council is now getting better value?

An urgent member review could have helped answer them.

Reform UK says it wants every penny examined. When councillors asked to examine one of KCC’s costliest areas more closely, the committee declined to recommend it.

Kent taxpayers are entitled to ask why.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent