SENIOR councillors in Newport have warned they are facing an ‘impossible’ job to plan budgets without knowing how much money they will receive from the government.

The city council is tasked with finding £30 million of savings by 2022 and is currently facing overspends in areas such as adult social care and children’s out-of-area placements.

A cabinet meeting heard on Wednesday that one out-of-county placement has cost the authority £32,000 per month.

The Labour-run council has overseen budget cuts of £45 million in the last five years, but senior councillors have warned they do not know where the money is going to come from to plug shortfalls in the future.

Cllr Mark Whitcutt, deputy leader of the council, said the current situation makes planning budgets “impossible”.

“It makes it impossible to plan when we do not know what our budget is going to be,” he said.

“Then we can also be hit by court decisions at very short notice, which can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds for just one individual.

“How do you plan for those circumstances?”

Council leader Debbie Wilcox said she has also raised the issue.

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“As we sit here at the end of July, the Welsh Government does not know what their budget is going to be,” she said.

“That is appalling.”

Cllr Matthew Evans, leader of the council’s Conservative group, said it would be “common sense” to allow councils more time to plan.

He added: “Both the UK and Welsh governments need to ensure that local councils can plan ahead and not just for one or two years.”

An early indication of Newport council’s budget position shows a predicted overspend of £1.3 million in children’s out-of-county placements, with numbers rising from a predicted 23 to 32.

Other pressures include children’s independent fostering, which is facing a £539,000 overspend.

The overall budget is predicting an underspend of £634,000.

Cllr Wilcox warned the authority was acting within “unprecedented times” and said councils were facing a “dire situation”.

The warnings came after the Local Government Association, which represents councils in England and Wales, found one third of authorities fear they will run out of funding to provide their statutory services by the end of this Parliament.

It said councils “urgently need some certainty about how local services will be funded” and that the situation was not helped by Brexit and political uncertainty.

Lord Gary Porter, chairman of the LGA, said: “Councils would normally have started their budget-setting planning process but remain completely in the dark about how much funding they will have next year.

“Communities relying on the vital local services that make a difference to their lives deserve better.”