‘IF A council department came back with a huge deficit like the one before us today, then we would be asking serious questions,’ was the assessment of Argyll and Bute Council leader Aileen Morton on the predicted £5 million overspend within the Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP).
A meeting of the council’s policy and resources committee heard last Thursday that the HSCP was going into its first full financial year with an overspend of £2.966m in its first quarter.
A letter will be sent to the HSCP chief executive Christina West to raise concerns in ‘no uncertain terms … at the escalating financial gap and the potential risk this brings to highly valued, essential local services, to the council and to the partnership itself’.