THE rising cost of looking after vulnerable children and adults is becoming a “really quite urgent” problem for Bradford and other councils, a finance chief has warned.

Bradford Council’s finance director Stuart McKinnon-Evans said this was the main reason why the authority had racked up a £6m overspend so far this year.

At a meeting of the Executive at City Hall today, he said: “Bradford Council is not alone in facing this kind of pressure.”

He said all departments were being asked to make an extra 1.5 per cent of savings “to get back on track”.

The meeting heard a recently-introduced social care levy on council tax bills wasn’t even covering the cost of the new living wage.

It also heard the council had hoped to cut the number of children in care, but the number had actually risen.

Councillor Val Slater, executive member for health and social care, said: “Protecting children, particularly vulnerable children, is a key priority for this council so it puts us very much into a Catch 22 situation.

“We can’t avoid the situation when children are at risk. We have to bring them into our care or take other action, and unfortunately there is a cost to that.”

The council’s leader, Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, said she hoped the Government would use the Autumn Statement later this month to invest more in social care for elderly and disabled adults.

She said: “It is such an important area. We will all be there one day.”

The Executive also approved a number of spending projects.

It gave the go-ahead to two long-awaited road projects being funded by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority: the widening of Hard Ings Road in Keighley and improvements to the junction of Harrogate Road and New Line in Greengates.

Councillors approved a £16.9m scheme to build a new 50-bed care home and 69-apartment extra care facility on the site of the former Bronte School in Keighley.

This is being funded through £4.3m of grants, £4.5m of borrowing that will be recouped through rental income and £8.1m of council cash already set aside for older people’s accommodation in the district.

They also agreed to spend £1.6m on new street lights in an ‘invest to save’ scheme, which is expected to create savings on energy costs and maintenance.

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