SHROPSHIRE Council ended the year with a £2.5 million deficit despite reducing its budget overspend for the last financial year by more than 40 per cent.

The authority has struggled with many factors which have hit its budget, including rising inflation, growing demand for children's social care, difficulty in recruiting staff to support in the area and reduced income for its commercial investments and services.

Shropshire Council says it has budget control plans to manage its budget, help reduce overspends and tackle its structural budget deficit gap.

Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s cabinet member for finance and corporate resources, said there were reasons as to why it happened.

He added: "It is of course disappointing that the council has finished the financial year over budget, but there are very clear and understandable reasons as to why this happened.

"It is compounded by the fact that it costs more to provide many of our services because Shropshire is a very large sparsely populated county, particularly at a time when things such as fuel costs are increasing so rapidly, and that we are not fairly funded to reflect this.

"We can, however, see that we are continuing to move in the right direction and have strong plans in place to continue to manage our financial position; although, like all businesses, we must keep this under close review to take account of emerging and unforeseen pressures such as the highest inflation rate for 40 years.

"We are now working to look at how we can further address these and will be presenting initial ideas for this soon.

"We are confident that, while we face a very challenging financial situation, we are continuing to move towards a much more sustainable position budget, with greater control of our future."