Central Bedfordshire Council should 'put its hands up and admit when it's wrong' to cut legal overspend

Dennis Galvin, director of finance, told the Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee (February 11) the legal overspend is “high on the list of the monitoring officer’s priorities”.

“She is looking at what’s driving those costs and and whether we’re entering into legal arrangements or legal costs that actually there’s little point in doing,” he said.

“If you were to do an analysis of a particular activity that usually involves legal spend and you find that over the years 95 per cent of those do not go in your favour, there is a judgement as to whether it’s actually worth pursuing that.

“Because it’s almost a foregone conclusion,” he said.

The report presented to the committee said the increase on the overspend is “mainly driven by legal fees and disbursements in support of Children’s and Families”.

Councillor Eugene Ghent (Conservative, Dunstable West) said: “So people who are unhappy with decisions that we’ve made about their children and their families. We need to get our act together and sort out our SEND issues and all these other problems. Because we can’t suddenly turn this tap off because it’s a constantly running tap, isn’t it?

“Dennis is right, there are some cases we should be putting our hands up and saying ‘you win’. We should be a bit more open and honest to say to a parent, or whoever it is, ‘you’re correct, we were wrong and we can remedy whatever your issue is’,” he said.