Cheshire East councillors have a statutory and moral responsibility for vulnerable children and must all be reminded of that when it comes to setting the budget, the committee chair said.

Cllr Laura Crane (Lab), who chairs the children and families committee, was speaking during a discussion on this year's predicted £8.86 million overspend.

"I think we all need to go away to our various groups and remind the other members of the importance of our corporate parenting role," she told yesterday's (Monday) meeting.

She said most residents and many councillors never come into contact with the services the council provides for children.

"Let's be honest, as a ward councillor, what do we get in our inbox?" she said.

"We get potholes, we get planning, we get missed bin collections and calls for another tip."

The Sandbach councillor said, because of this, it was understandable when it came to budget setting, that ward councillors' focus may not be on the need to provide more funding for children's services.

"So it's our duty, as children and families' members, to go out and remind our fellow councillors that, yes, we might be asking for more money," she said.

She added if the service did overspend 'we cannot turn around and say to a child, I'm very sorry we spent our budget for cared for children, now that's it, we can't take any more'.

And she said the same applied to adult services.

Other committees, in the past, have been critical of both the children's and adults services for overspending.

In September of last year, Cllr Craig Browne (Alderley Edge, Ind) said at a meeting of the highways and transport committee: "It's very noticeable that it's the place-based services [such as highways] once again, that are coming in either on budget, or slightly under budget, and then we've got this huge overspend in adults and health and children and families."

And he had asked: "What facility do we have, as a committee, to write to the chairs of adults and health and children and families and ask them, when are they going to get their houses in order?"

Highways committee chair Mark Goldsmith (Wilmslow, Ind) had told him: "The point of the transformational process is to stop spending ever more money on children and families and to get more money into the areas where the public do want the money to be spent, such as transport."

But highways member Cllr Liz Braithwaite (Macclesifled, Lab) had pointed out: "In children and adults services the council is legally obliged to provide, no matter how much they cost."