Dozens of staff are expected to be made redundant by Gravesham councillors in an urgent bid to stop a £600,000 overspend this year.

Horrified councillors are trying to fathom out why their local authority is facing massive overspending which would bankrupt a company.

Gravesham Borough Council's cabinet will be told on Monday night that hoped-for cuts in spending, intended to balance the books this year, have failed to happen.

Five months into the financial year, money chiefs have been forced to admit the council is expected to end the year £600,000 overspent.

Next year it faces a £1.039million gap between its income and expenditure unless it acts now.

In January the council was supposed to make £1.3million savings to balance the books. More than half was to come from not replacing staff who left. The trouble is, staff have stayed.

A new budget is being drawn up by directors which will be put to councillors at an extraordinary meeting of members on October 18.

Enforced redundancies and early retirements are expected to be brought in, while charges for services are expected to rocket.

Car parking costs may also rise - but the council admits people are not using the parking spaces as much as they expected.

Major problems have also been identified with the council's planning operations.

The financial state of the country has hit planning applications as builders hold back on investment. That has meant a big drop in planning fees for the council.

In addition, the council's planning blueprint has had to be rewritten in the wake of government changes to planning rules. Together they had added over £300,000 to bills.

A report to Gravesham cabinet says managers are being told there can be no growth plans at least until 2016 and maybe longer.

Directors are now meeting weekly to discuss the state of council funding, with staff having to get their approval for any purchases. Recruitment has been stopped, contracted staff are being laid off from the end of October, and there is a ban on overtime.

The council must now make savings totalling nearly £9million by 2015 - equal to more than half its annual wage bill.

Cllr Mike Snelling (Con) who was leader of the council when the original budget was prepared, has pointed the finger at officers for not warning there were risks with this year's budget.

He also blamed Labour.

He said: "The simple fact is that with a fastmoving and deteriorating national financial situation, Labour has not acted quickly enough to take the requisite management action and control recruitment which is clearly needed if natural wastage targets are not being met."

Cllr John Burden (Lab) who inherited his party's budget in May, said: "This is the worst, last, desperate action of a flim-flam merchant. We said at the time the budget was a colandar budget - full of holes."

Officers will report to the council that the current budget was overly-ambitious and opportunistic.

Their report says it was based on hope, lacked a formal exit plan and "left the council at risk of non-achievement of its ambitious target".