Care providers looking after some of Northumberland’s most vulnerable children have been accused of charging “morally reprehensible” bills. A council boss hit out at companies in the private care market this week, amid concern over the escalating costs to local authorities forced to use external providers to look after some children and young people with complex care needs.
Figures presented to Northumberland councillors on Wednesday showed that the county council reported a £4.5 million overspend of its budget for such external residential care placements in 2025/26. The number of Northumberland children in external care placements stood at 80 as of March this year, six higher than 12 months before, and the average weekly cost of a single placement had jumped from £6,052 to £6,592.
Private Providers Accused of Exploitation
Audrey Kingham, the council’s executive director of children, young people and education, told a scrutiny committee that some companies were upping their charges at just a few hours’ notice. She said: “It is really difficult for us to manage that private market and the cost base. There are some behaviours that are, in my mind, morally reprehensible in the charges they raise. Sometimes we get a phone call on a Friday saying they are not able to continue with a placement on X price, but can offer a placement from midnight tonight at X [higher] amount.”
Ms Kingham said that council staff do “really challenge” such companies rather than simply accepting their demands, but that a lack of available council-run facilities and the need to keep children safe means that they are often not able to move those children to alternative homes.
Council Plans to Expand In-House Provision
She told councillors that the authority is seeking to build or buy more properties for use as children’s care homes within Northumberland, in order to keep youngsters within the county and cut down on private care costs. But she reported that there had been delays in securing the necessary planning and Ofsted approvals to get them open. Ms Kingham added: “Last year it took a long time to get registrations. We had the staff and the properties, but not the Ofsted registrations – not because we were not ready, but because they had a long queue of properties to get the regulatory inspectors to visit and give us the certificates.”
Reform UK councillor Stephen Flower described care companies’ actions as “blackmail” and urged the council to increase the number of in-house placements it can offer to avoid being “held to ransom” by the private market.
Rising Demand and Budget Pressures
Conservative Nick Oliver, the council’s cabinet member for finance, said County Hall chiefs were trying to predict the level of increasing demand for care packages each year and the resulting pressure on council budgets, but that just a handful of cases could prove incredibly costly. He added: “If you have a situation where 10 extra packages can add millions of pounds to the budget of a department, and that is 10 people out of a population of 300,000, that is quite stark. We are trying to get it right but we are facing constantly increasing demand.”
Asked what was the root cause of the rising demand on children’s services, Ms Kingham said that the trend pre-dated but had been accelerated by the Covid pandemic – and was linked to varied factors including increased poverty levels, family breakdowns, and medical advances that mean children now live longer with more complex needs.
