Merton Council has been accused of making avoidable cuts to adult social care after it was revealed it overestimated the budget deficit by almost £2m. 

The controversial budget, which included £5m of cuts to the adult social care budget, was passed at a dramatic budget meeting on March 2.

At the time, the council predicted it would end the financial year with a deficit of £2.605m.
However, unaudited accounts, drawn up on March 31, have shown the council actually ended the year with a deficit of £.0.699m, meaning Merton Council had £1.906m more than expected. 

At a full council meeting on July 13, the Conservative opposition group submitted a motion criticising the council for the error, which was publicised in a report last month.

The cuts have included scrapping Meals on Wheels and the charity Imagine Independence, a reduction in adult social care staff, phased decommissioning of the South Thames Crossroads service for carers and reviewing all support packages to vulnerable and disabled people. 

Conservative Councillor Hamish Badenoch said: “Merton Labour are completely incapable of effectively managing their finances. 
“After failing to deliver £5m savings, it now turns out that the budget plans on which adult social care cuts were based were inaccurate, misleading and could have been avoided – once again residents are paying the price for Labour’s incompetence.”

Cabinet member for finance, Councillor Mark Allison, said: “Due to Government cuts we estimate we will need to make £20m in additional savings to our annual budget over the next four years. 

“The work that we did to reduce the deficit last year has helped, but sadly finding a little extra money in one year doesn’t mean we can stop making savings and we still have a long way to go to bridge the annual £20m gap.”

He declined to state how the additional funds revealed in the accounts will be allocated.

Merton Council has been committed to freezing council tax, an election pledge in 2014, and declined the chance to use money no longer being collected for the Olympic precept to fund adult social care and reduce the scale of cuts needed. 

This decision caused deep rifts within the Labour group, with  Councillor Peter Walker voting against the budget and resigning in protest and Councillor Jeff Hanna being suspended after abstaining from the vote.

A £1.3m Savings Mitigation Fund was set up by the council in order to offset the impact of the cuts.
A spokeswoman for Merton Council confirmed the fund has not yet been accessed by either adult social care or children’s services, and said it had not yet been needed.

Chief executive of the Merton Centre for Independent Living, Lyla Adwan-Kamara, said: “We know that while this might all sound like a bit of an account exercise, in actual fact cuts to services harm real people.

“We are already aware of people whose support is being cut this year, and these cuts are really damaging to people’s wellbeing.

“We’re really thrilled there is now an additional £2m available to support local disabled people and older people and we’re sure that the leader and Merton Council as a whole will be very pleased to be able to reduce the pressure of cuts to adult social care.”