Delays to cost-cutting measures and debt write-offs among the financial pressures facing Kirklees Council

The council has faced major financial challenges in recent years, with £47m needing to be found to balance the books when the situation peaked in 2023.

Although things have improved since then, the local authority is still working to address a significant black hole in its budget.

At the end of the first quarter of the current financial year, the council has projected a £13.6m overspend on its budget. This is after it has applied £5.2m worth of reserves.

Within this overspend, an estimated £8m is due to slippage and “non-delivery of the approved savings programme across the council”, a recent report states.

The local authority has put a number of mitigation measures in place including: controls around recruitment; a review of overtime and use of agency staff; essential spending only; and a review of the capital plan in a bid to reduce borrowing.

But even with all of these measures in place, the council is still expecting to use its reserves as a fallback.

Coun Simon Brophy, cabinet member for strategic finance and local government efficiency, said: “These figures starkly show the financial legacy this new administration has inherited. Every penny of the overspend relates to a period before this cabinet was appointed but it falls to us to get the council’s budget back on track.

“That’s why it’s so important that one of our cabinet’s key priorities is to deliver value for money to taxpayers across Kirklees. That means eliminating wasteful spending, reviewing budgets and reducing forecast levels of debt that ultimately put a strain on the budget and on Kirklees taxpayers.

“I’m already working with officers to review a range of spending and we are taking specific actions to reduce overspends in social care for children and adults which is where the pressure is most acute.”

Providing insight on another of the local authority’s financial challenges is a report to the corporate governance and audit committee which states that the council wrote off £6.48m worth of bad debt in 2025/26 as the cost of living crisis continues to bite. This is around £1.8m more than was written off in the year prior (2024/25).

The two biggest contributors were unpaid council tax (£2.34m) and business rates (£2.99m), according to the report.

Next on the list are adult social care (£427,000), housing benefit overpayment (£330,000), and the housing revenue account (£160,000).

The report states: “Last year was once again another challenging year financially due to the continued cost of living pressures faced.

“This resulted in an increased number of customers having difficulties paying their bills and it is anticipated that the council will need to continue to write off debt each year as it becomes harder to collect and will therefore take longer to recover moving forward.”

The council says that it has a “good record” of collecting income due, including through a “range of supportive measures” to help bill payers who may be struggling to pay. It also expects to recover more debt in the “fullness of time”.