00:00Here outside Sessions House where for the past six months Reform have been trying to live up to
00:05these local election promises and one of those includes cutting costs and we know about their
00:10doge style cost cutting measures I should say that they inherited or brought on similar to the
00:18Trump administration. But fast forward to the start of this month where Reform's cabinet
00:23members started talking about some money issues that they were a little bit bare bones and then
00:28as you say we've received word today that they are in fact overspending by three percent of their
00:35total revenue budget. We'll get more into that budget in a second but first as you mentioned
00:40let's hear what Keir Starmer had to say back in the House of Commons today.
00:45My sympathy is with the people of Kent whose lives are being disrupted by the staggering incompetence
00:51of reform. Mr Speaker Kent County Council was supposed to be the blueprint for what reform
00:57would deliver across the country. Now we can see what that means. Cutting local services,
01:03raising council tax, failing to protect the public. That's all reform have to offer. Grievance,
01:10division and total incompetence.
01:12Said David, leader of the Liberal Democrats.
01:16All right Finn then can you explain what this overspent, where it has come from and a bit about
01:21the budget? Absolutely. So in that release we received today Kent County Council expressed that
01:28their adult social care budget had gone over by about seven percent or they sorry they they're
01:35forecasting this kind of overspending and on the other hand they claim that most of the other
01:40services are underspending bringing the overall position to an overspend of just three percent of
01:45the total revenue budget. So they're claiming that this social care budget is so is going to be
01:50overspent by so much that it's going to sort of drag everything else down. The council leader
01:54Lyndon Kem Keren has come out today and said the latest monitoring report illustrates the incredible
01:59challenges facing the authority particularly in relation to adult social care. When we were elected
02:04in May it became apparent how challenged the how challenged this budget was under the previous
02:09administration this department overspent massively. So you can see that they're highlighting this as a
02:15particular issue this adult social care budget. She added to remedy the situation we'll need to
02:20make necessary but difficult decisions and we will require some input from central government. Now we
02:26don't exactly know what those difficult decisions will exactly constitute but the council added they
02:30are putting in place a series of measures to reduce the overspend including targeted actions within
02:35adult social care and robust controls across the rest of the organization to mitigate the overspend as
02:40far as possible. So we'll be hearing more updates on exactly how they'll be tackling this. All right thank you Finn.
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