A NEW Government – but the same problems remain for Dorset Council.

The verdict comes from the portfolio holder leading the authority on finance, Chickerell Lib Dem councillor Simon Clifford.

He says that although Dorset's financial situation is far better than most it remains with challenges which need to be solved and will have to tackle areas where money can be saved.

These include the school transport budget, which was more than £6million overspent in the last financial year for children with additional needs, many of which are taken to and from school each day by taxi, often accompanied by a chaperone.

Work is underway to try and find better and more cost effective ways to keep the bills down, or reduce them, but in the past most proposals have met with opposition from parents and carers.

Executive director for council finances Aiden Dunn said that school transport would be one of the areas of focus for the authority in the coming months with an attempt to make savings, including optimising bus routes.

He said in some cases parents would need to be persuaded that, with the right level of support, their child, or children, might not need to travel to and from school in their own individual transport.

Cllr Clifford said other issues facing the council include adult social care and children's services, between them the biggest spending departments, where both are demand-led, so difficult to predict the spending levels which might be needed.

He said the council also had ambitions to do more to help the supply of affordable housing and was still working on ways in which the authority could work smarter and better to make savings – known as transformation spending, which he admitted remained 'a challenge.'

He said that although the council finished the last financial year with an overspend of just under £1million, 0.3% of its day to day spending, some service departments were significantly overspent, the balance made up by savings in other areas and better than expected returns on council tax and business rates.

Audit and governance committee members heard that while capping the revenue spending was a struggle the authority ended up deferring £18million of its £98million capital budget, with projects which could not be started, or had to be delayed, often because of rising prices.

"We might have a new Government, but we have still got the same, old, issues," said Cllr Clifford.