Havering Council has warned it will fall short of its savings target by £2million, as it faces mounting financial pressure.

The cash-strapped authority planned to make £15m in cuts by next February, but a recent review shows £2.4m worth are “unlikely to be delivered”.

Officers have been asked to find alternative cuts by the year’s end.

The budget for early help provision was set to be cut by £422,000, but the town hall scrapped its review after a damning Ofsted report ruled it needed to improve its children’s services.

The improvement plan, signed off by the cabinet in July, ended up costing £5m.

Further changes to bin collections, parking, and a review of adult social care providers have also been branded “unachievable”.

Councillor Martin Goode, leader of East Havering Residents’ Group, expressed concern at an Overview and Scrutiny Board meeting last week that some savings could “trip up” and also end up not being delivered. He said the current forecast was “based on speculation”.

The council’s plan to close four of its ten libraries, in a bid to save around £300,000, is also “unlikely” to yield any savings until next year.

Councillor Phil Ruck, with the Residents’ Association Independent Group, said budgeting for savings that were not deliverable that same year was like “budgeting to fail”.

Despite the millions in savings, a 4.99 per cent increase to council tax and increased government grants, the town hall was unable to balance the books for 2024/25.

It accepted a £32.5m loan from the government in March and is expected to withdraw the full amount, which it would spend the next two decades repaying.

The government has also furnished the council with a 30-page report, outlining various changes it will need to make, but finance director Kathy Freeman said it had been “strictly embargoed”.

During the meeting, she said it could not be discussed publicly and even top-ranking officers had not been allowed to read it.

These setbacks come after the council revealed in August it had already overspent this year by £18m.

Havering divides its services into two categories: ‘people,’ such as social care and children’s services, and ‘place,’ which covers planning, asset management and environmental matters.

The total budget for its people services is £155m, but the authority is projected to spend some £170m by the year’s end. The council had put aside £13m for its place services, but a report published in late August indicated it will end up spending closer to £16m.

The biggest pressure the council faces is on its housing budget, and has been spending millions on keeping at-risk residents in hotels. It is also facing increasing pressure on its child social care services.

Among the £10m in cuts the council has successfully made are the cancellation of buying new books for its libraries, pausing recruitment in various roles, and reducing the budget for home-to-school transport by £200,000.

Chris Wilkins, Havering Council’s cabinet member for finance, described local government funding as a “broken system” and said the council would “continue to lobby [central government] through all available channels”.