The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is on course to spend over £12 million more than it budgeted for, a new report to council leader shows.

The report shows the council’s financial situation has worsened since July, when officers said they were already expecting a £10 million overspend.

The report says the worsening situation was down to ‘pressures in children’s and adult’s social care and temporary accommodation’. It noted that these ‘match what is being seen across Berkshire and the wider country’.

However it added that on top of this the council has also made less money than expected from parking charges, and faced extra costs in its waste services.

The Royal Borough reported in July this year that it faced an overspend of £9.89 million. But since then its predicted spend on adult social care and health has risen by another £1.398 million ‘mainly due to continuing pressures for the cost of care packages’.

It means that the council is on course to spend £4.3 million more than it hoped to on adult social care and health this year.

The council is also on course to overspend by a similar amount – some £4.47 million – on children’s services. Officers say they had hoped to make savings of £1.1 million this year by transitioning 12 children out of care.

But the report says some of these transitions are likely to be delayed or cancelled ‘as the children are either not ready to move, families are not ready to support them or there is not an alternative cost effective placement that can meet their needs’.

It adds that the main pressure on children’s services spending is the cost of care homes – some of which can cost more than £10,000 a week.

An in-house foster care placement costa an average of £516 per week by comparison. But the report says there is a shortage of foster carers in the borough – and a national shortage of care placements generally, driving up prices.

Meanwhile the council says it’s housing department is on course to overspend by £1.4 million. It says it is currently supporting 286 households at risk of becoming homeless – ‘the highest number of households in recent times’.

Council officers say they hope to cut the overspend down to £8.76 million using contingency funds.

Leading councillors on the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead’s cabinet committee were set to discuss the overspend at a meeting on Wednesday September 2.