The London Borough of Bexley was formed in 1965. The borough has a population of approximately 250,000 people and is located in south-east London forming part of Outer London. The borough is bordered to the north by the River Thames, to the west by Royal Borough of Greenwich, to the south by London Borough of Bromley and to the east by Dartford Borough Council in the county of Kent. Bexley has 45 Councillors, having reduced voluntarily from 63 in 2018. Councillors represent 17 wards and Bexley has been under Conservative majority control since 2006. The next all-out elections will be held in May 2026.

The Council has a Leader and Cabinet model of governance. Its Cabinet consists of the Leader of the Council together with seven other Cabinet Members including the Cabinet Member for Education and the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services. The Council has four Overview and Scrutiny Committees with each representing each Directorate. The Audit Committee is consolidated with the General Purposes Committee.

The Council’s Corporate Leadership Team (CLT) comprises the Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service), the Director of Finance and Corporate Services (the Section 151 Officer), the Director of Adult Social Care and Health, the Director of Children’s Services, and the Director of Place.

The Council has no housing stock but has its own development company (BexleyCo Ltd).

The last Children’s Services Ofsted inspection in 2023 gave the Council a rating of ‘Outstanding’. The local area Special Educational Needs (SEND) inspection, also in 2023 identified significant failings in the partnership. The Council are due a focused visit by Ofsted.

The Council are part of the Department for Education’s (DfE) SEND safety valve programme in relation to their Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG). The DfE have agreed to provide £28.89m of funding. The deficit at the end of March 2024 was £4.437m less than the original safety valve assumption. The latest budget monitoring report indicates an overall overspend for 2024/25 of £4.557m, the accumulated deficit on 31 March 2025 will be £11.513m, compared to an assumed deficit in the Safety Valve of £7.641m.

Executive summary

The Peer team found that staff are proud to work for Bexley and are ambitious about the scale of change needed to face ongoing financial challenges. Bexley is recognised widely as a lean organisation spending less per head of population than the average London Borough. For 2023/24, Bexley’s planned expenditure per resident of £781 was the second lowest, when compared with the average of Bexley’s nearest neighbours and the English average, which were £886 and £1,049 respectively.

The peer challenge team reviewed the Council’s finances, Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS), budget reports and financial monitoring information. The Council has set a budget for 2024/25 of £237.444m. Council tax for 2024/25 was increased by the maximum allowable, 4.99 per cent. The MTFS is reporting a gap of £4.8m in 2025/26 rising to £43.9m in 2028/29. The reported gap from 2026/27 assumes the reduced level of Council Tax increase, no Adult Social Care precept and the discontinuation of a number of grants as these have not been announced by the Government. Further work is required to identify and close the consequent gap.

The 2023/24 budget overspent by £8.644m, which was funded from the Financial Planning Reserve reserves and one-off mitigations. The biggest areas of overspend in 2023/24 were Adult Social Care £3m (4.36 per cent) and Children’s Services £13.6m (29.9 per cent). These services are forecast to overspend in 2024/25 by £2.4m and £5.4m respectively. The Council are currently managing to contain Temporary Accommodation pressures, against the trend of most London Boroughs overspending. This is impressive, but given the trends across London, Temporary Accommodation pressure will remain a high risk to budget assumptions going forward.

Having reviewed the council’s financial documents and discussed them with interviewees, the peer challenge team were very concerned about the Council’s financial sustainability, the low level of unallocated revenue reserves and the trending overspends in Adults and Children’s Services. There is also a risk of an overreliance on transformation to balance the MTFS. In addition, the MTFS’ link to the corporate strategy needs further development, the Council needs clarity on the final operating model. The link between outcomes and value for money needs to be better developed and understood.

It was found that there has been significant recent improvement in the way the finance function connects with services. The business partner model is developing and further improvements in data will enhance its effectiveness. Finance and performance colleagues need to work across the Council to use data to better understand activity, especially when producing the business cases required for the transformation programme.

The Council has recently established the need for a transformation programme. The terms of reference and scope have been approved by the Board including a very high-level savings target, to be achieved over five key workstreams. The plan is in its infancy; the approach to transformation is not fully matured. This needs to evolve to better reflect a one council approach. It became apparent from the interviews held, that the perception is the Council is still functioning in a siloed way.

There is a strong appetite within the Deputy Director and Head of Service cohort in Children's Services for change and transformation, and better cross-council working.