H&F Council expects to overspend by £14.4m this year. Adult social care drives £11.2m of it, and B&B homeless placements run at almost twice budget.
Hammersmith and Fulham Council expects to spend £14.4 million more than its budget this year. That is 6.4 per cent of its net budget of about £222 million.
The report’s own table gives £14.376 million. Its summary rounds that to £14.3 million.
The forecast is in the Revenue Budget Review 2026/27, Month 2, which the council’s Cabinet noted on Monday 14 September. The draft decision list records that Cabinet noted the forecast and approved the budget movements. Those decisions can be called in until 3pm on Friday 18 September.
The figures are as at the end of May. Finance officers signed the report off on 12 June, so the position is almost four months old by the time it reached Cabinet.
Where the money is going
Every department is forecast to overspend:
- People, which covers adult social care and children’s services: £13.2 million
- Place, which covers bins, streets, parks and planning: £3.2 million
- Housing Solutions: £2.7 million
- Finance and Corporate Services: £1.1 million
Care for adults accounts for most of the gap. Adult social care is forecast to overspend by £11.2 million on its own. The largest pieces are:
- supported living and extra care: £5.6 million over, on a budget of £14.4 million
- direct payments: £2.4 million over
- other care services and commissioning: £1.4 million over, mainly interim staff paid above permanent rates
- home care: £1.2 million over
- residential and nursing placements: £0.6 million over
The report puts the supported living pressure down to more residents with complex physical, learning disability and mental health needs.
Children’s services add another £2.0 million. That includes £649,000 on travel support for children with special educational needs, which the report links to “sustained growth” in Education, Health and Care Plans.
Bed and breakfast placements are running at almost double the budget
Temporary accommodation is the second big pressure. The council budgeted for an average of 248 clients in bed and breakfast this year. The forecast is 487.
At the end of May, 412 of them were placed in B&B annexes. That line alone is £4.3 million over budget.
Private sector leased homes are slightly cheaper than planned. The council expects an average of 855 clients in them against a budget of 925, at £428.89 a week each against a budgeted £436.31. That saves about £750,000.
The report says every household in B&B will be reviewed “to establish duty and reduce demand”.
Bins, street cleaning and garden waste
The Place department is forecast to be £3.2 million over. The report gives three reasons residents will recognise:
- waste collection and street cleaning: £1.25 million over, because contract inflation ran above what the budget allowed
- waste disposal: £850,000 over, because the new wheeled bin service is not yet paying for itself through lower disposal costs
- garden waste: a £372,000 saving is unlikely to be delivered, because fewer than 10,000 households have subscribed to the new garden waste collection service
Collection days for your street are on our Fulham bin collection days page.
Legal costs are also £1.0 million over, now that the council has moved all of its legal spending into one budget.
Savings are about half delivered
The 2026/27 budget relied on £9.5 million of savings. The council now expects to deliver £5.0 million of them, leaving a £4.5 million shortfall.
The two biggest gaps are:
- a £1.75 million adult social care “stretch target”, where the forecast delivery is nil
- £1.05 million from moving private sector leases into the council’s housing company, also forecast at nil
Some savings are on track. One of them is a £20 rise in the court costs added to each council tax summons, which is expected to raise £157,000. Band charges are on our Fulham council tax bands page.
What closes the gap
Not much of it is closed yet. Several things are already helping, or could:
- central budgets are £5.9 million under, mostly from £4.8 million of extra interest on cash balances and lower borrowing costs
- a £6 million surplus on council tax and business rates from earlier years is already counted in the forecast
- departments have identified about £2.1 million of possible mitigations
- £2.0 million of contingency is uncommitted and not yet counted
That still leaves most of the £14.4 million to find. The report says spending controls have been tightened, including on recruitment and purchase orders. It also says “a corporate review of services is also underway to identify areas to cease or reduce”. It does not say which services.
The report states that the council “continues to retain a good level of balances/reserves”.
The schools deficit
The high needs block of the Dedicated Schools Grant, which pays for special educational needs support, is forecast to run £9.6 million over this year. That would take the cumulative deficit to £17.5 million.
The council expects a new Government stability grant to cover most of it: an estimated £7.6 million for earlier years and £8.7 million for this year. The report says the grant for this year is “TBC subject to approved SEN reform plan”. If it arrives in full, a £1.3 million residual would be met from a reserve.
Council housing
The Housing Revenue Account, which runs council homes and is funded from rents, faces a £2.2 million pressure. The biggest items are £962,000 on decants, moving tenants out while repairs are done, and £958,000 on disrepair claims and their legal costs.
The council says mitigations will cover the full £2.2 million, leaving its £6.5 million housing reserve untouched.
What it means for you
- Council tax for 2026/27 was set in advance, so this forecast does not change this year’s bill.
- The “corporate review of services” is the thing to watch. Proposals to stop or reduce services would normally come back to Cabinet as named decisions, and they appear on the council’s key decisions list before they are taken.
- Garden waste take-up is the figure to watch on bins. With fewer than 10,000 households subscribed, the service is not delivering the saving it was budgeted to make.
- Cabinet meetings are open to the public and are streamed on the council’s YouTube channel.
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