BOURNEMOUTH council is currently budgeted to have a £173,000 overspend at the end of the financial year.

However, leader Councillor John Beesley said further "hard work" prior to April 1 could see this figure shrunk to zero "making our eleventh year in a row being balanced or better".

At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, chief financial officer Adam Richens said the projected overspend was less than one per cent of the borough's £127 million budget for 2017/18.

The predicted overspend has already been reduced from £3.2m in July last year, which the council credits to a "strong culture of active financial management".

Speaking at the meeting, deputy leader Cllr Nicola Greene said: "The challenges set out in this paper are well rehearsed, as indeed are many mitigation measures, but this shouldn't disguise the relentless hard work on the part of our officers.

"It is important to consider these challenges as a driver for Local Government Reorganisation, though not the only driver."

And Cllr Robert Lawton, cabinet member for housing, said: "It has been a challenging year for all of us.

"We can see adult social care spending just under £54m is shown as balanced, children's social care spending just under £24m is balanced – these are budgets that take up nearly 75 per cent of our annual spend.

"I think that is a tremendous achievement."

Cllr Lawton's own portfolio, housing, is forecast for a £660k underspend, taking up the slack for a number of 'departments' still expected to come in over budget, particularly 'environment', where £1.2m over budget is expected.

There, the report to cabinet states, the borough has been forced to retain more waste collection vehicles than it had planned after changing its shift model.

"Some new pressures have arisen this year," the report states. "Contract payment increases and rising costs linked to seafront collections and bulky waste."

The other significant area of overspending is in children and young people's services, at £610,000.

There the council has faced increasing costs in home to school transport for children with special educational needs.

Sharing services and staff with Borough of Poole, staff cuts, management restructuring and the use of reserves are among the way the council has kept costs down.