Ceredigion County Council recorded a £30,000 surplus thanks to underspending and extra council tax receipts.

This was despite an overspend of almost £2m by the adult social services department.

Despite dire warnings over the level of savings the council needed to find, final figures for the financial year showed that the majority of departments actually underspent, helping to offset over-spends in the adult services and highways department.

That left the council with a small surplus of £30,000 overall, with the authority also increasing its general balances.

Council leader Ellen ap Gwynn has been highly critical of the Westminster and Welsh governments in recent years, saying that funding settlements had left councils having to make savings of millions of pounds.

She said that while the final position was positive, work was being done in the adult social services budget to address issues which had led to the over spend, which ended up being greater than had been anticipated at the end of the third quarter.

Cllr ap Gwynn said: “The budgetary performance has been positive. Work is ongoing in adult services to manage the financial pressures.”

A report by finance department officer Justin Davies said: “The over-spend on adult services was just under £2m, which was an increase compared to the quarter three position, which anticipated an over spend of £1.3m.

However, other service areas had a higher under spend than forecast, in addition a surplus on council tax of £269,000 together with additional grant funding which included £145,000 for Storm Callum.”

However, while Cllr Ceredig Davies praised council staff for control over the budget, he said he had some concerns that social services was being kept afloat by further cuts in other areas.

He said: “I am worried other departments are making more cuts to subsidise social services. That shouldn’t happen.”

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition on Wednesday