Title

FINANCE

Bristol council faces 'huge financial risk'

Bristol City Council has been warned it must take urgent action over the spiralling cost of special educational needs and disabilities.

Bristol City Council has been warned it must take urgent action over the spiralling cost of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

In the last financial year it spent £94.6m on SEND - £16m more than was initially budgeted.

Added to its previous overspend, Bristol now has a total deficit of £42.5m.

Although councils are not legally allowed to outspend their budgets, Parliament granted permission for councils to run deficits in their schools budget until March 2026.

Bristol's finance manager Angel Lai told a council meeting: ‘We don't have the reserves to cover the overspend as it is, let alone if the position keeps on deteriorating – it's a huge financial risk to the local authority.'

FINANCE

Central government must ease its grip

By Florence Eshalomi | 23 July 2025

Councils must have more power to control their own affairs - accountable not to Westminster in the first instance, but to their own local electorates, says F...

FINANCE

Searching for a solution

By Sir Bob Neill | 16 July 2025

As the Government embarks on SEND reform, Sir Bob Neill asks whether ministers have chosen the right path.

FINANCE

Hitting the strike button

By David Blackman | 16 July 2025

The three main local government unions have all rejected the employers’ pay offer. How strong is the possibility of widespread strike action against a backdr...

FINANCE

Navigating place-based decarbonisation

By Paul Marinko | 02 July 2025

In a rapidly changing world and a sector consumed with financial pressures and local government reorganisation, climate initiatives will prove difficult to k...

Popular articles by Mark Whitehead