Council reviewing capital spend profiling to improve future forecasting

West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) will continue to review the way it forecasts spend against major capital projects that invest in and improve infrastructure and facilities for local communities.

Cabinet members have asked officers to review the profiling process after provisional end-of-year figures for the Council’s 2025-26 Capital Programme show the authority spending significantly less than it had planned to on capital projects. 

While WNC continues to face significant financial pressures in its revenue budget, which funds day-to-day services, capital funding works very differently. It can only be used for projects, such as building and expanding schools, regenerating town centres and upgrading public facilities. It cannot be spent on running everyday services. It is not funded directly by Council Tax and much of the funding comes from specific government grants, receipts from the disposal of assets or other sources that legally have to be used for capital projects. 

During 2025-26 the Council had originally anticipated it would spend a total of £173.2m in capital funding across over 200 projects, although provisional end-of-year figures show a total in year spend of £109.6m. The reduced spend against the budget is mainly due to the timing of spend not meeting the profile forecast in the budget.  

Capital schemes can span different financial years on the same project and therefore if projects are delayed, often for good reason, the actual spend in one financial year may not match the profiled spend contained within the budget for that year. These budgets will then be carried forward into the next financial year to accommodate this delay in order for the delivery of the overall project not to be affected. 

Councillor John Slope, Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources, said: “We recognise there is a significant gap in spending on the capital programme compared to what was initially budgeted and we know we need to get a firmer grip on how we are profiling these projects. We’re therefore actively reviewing the current process with officers to see where we can tighten monitoring, strengthen upfront planning of these projects so we can ensure a more realistic spend forecast throughout the year.” 

Cabinet will consider and discuss the provisional outturn forecast for the capital programme at its meeting at Towcester’s Forum on Tuesday (9 June) from 6pm. View the Cabinet agenda and watch the meeting broadcasted live on WNC’s YouTube channel.