Gwynedd residents face a council tax rise of up to 16 per cent as the council tries to balance its books.

Council chief executive Dafydd Gibbard warned of “difficult decisions” ahead as the council forecast an overspend of £7.6million by the end of the financial year, and an estimated £14-18m budget gap for the next financial year.

“There are no easy answers, unless you stop providing services, the only other option is to raise council tax, you could be looking at as much as 16 percent,” he said.

A spending freeze was already being discussed.

Six departments have overspends, four described as “significant”. The worst are Adults, Health and Well-Being, Children and Families, Highways, Engineering, Ymgynghoriaeth Gwynedd Consultancy (YGC) and Environment.

Cllr Paul Rawlinson said: “The problem is not one of over-spending, but one of underfunding. We’re just not getting enough government resources.”

The Adults, Health and Well-being department projections suggest an overspend of £2.7 million due to increasing pressure on domiciliary care provision, higher staffing costs, sickness levels and high rates of non-contact hours with the internal provision.

The Children and Families department has a reported overspend of up to £3.2 million as a result of “an increase in out-of-county placement costs”, and in the “complexities of packages and increased use of unregistered placements”.

Highways, Engineering and YGC is expected to have an overspend of £649,000.

In municipal, there was additional pressure on the budgets of street cleaning and cleaning public toilets.

Environment saw an overspend of £1.083m forecast, with waste collection and recycling responsible for £334,000 of the overspend.

Employment costs and sickness and overtime levels are “problematic”, a meeting heard.

Additional fleet costs, reduced parking income, and number of “slipping savings schemes” were also “part of the bigger picture”.

Education saw a £1.5m overspend in the 2023/24 financial year on school transport. The department got an extra budget allocation of around £900,000 on a permanent basis, and £900,000 for a year only to “address pressures” in school bus and taxi provision following the re-tendering of contracts, however there was now “a balanced financial position”.

Housing and Property showed a “trend of significant pressure on the emergency accommodation services”.

The £227,000 overspend came after considering the additional budget of £3m allocated from the council tax premium as well as a one-off additional budget of £1.2 million.

Cabinet members approved the transfer of almost £1.9m of underspend on corporate budgets to the council’s Financial Strategy Reserve.

New savings and cuts needed include a freeze on spending and use of the council’s reserves to fund the financial deficit projected for 2024/25.

A follow-up report will be presented to cabinet in January following an end of November review.

The chief executive said: “‘Overspend’ is a technical term, what it really is, is a lack of funding.

“On one hand we have increasing demand for services, on the other a lack of increase in our budget creating a bigger and bigger gap.”