LEISURE chiefs in York are counting the cost of an £83,000 overspend in their council budget.

Figures revealed by City of York Council show that, despite extra income and expenditure savings from its £10,721 leisure and heritage budget, the department is still in the red.

But Coun Keith Orrell, the executive member for leisure, defended the overspend - which was at one time estimated at £160,000.

He blamed the problem partially on last year's inherited budget, labelling parts as "unrealistic".

"The overspend is clearly not what we would have wanted, but there were some things built into the budget last year that were inherited, particularly some savings for the Youth Service that really weren't realistic at that time.

"Some of the overspend is to do with dealing with vandalism, some to do with not realising income that we'd hoped for. An example is that Central Library was down to open a caf, but we weren't able to get enough interest in the private sector," said Coun Orrell.

Councillors attending a leisure and heritage meeting at York Guildhall on Monday will hear that the figure is £4,000 less than predicted in February.

Two overspends within the youth service, including the Fossbank Skatepark, were likely to continue into 2004/2005.

Coun Orrell said efforts had been made to identify savings in the budget without cutting out central programmes while pouring additional funding into worthwhile projects.

He said: "An extra £60,000 is being spent on holiday programmes for the whole year and there will be the biggest ever programme for the summer holidays.

"Since we've taken over last year we've asked all officers to look carefully at all expenditure at all times and we've managed to reduce all aspects of it."

Updated: 09:23 Saturday, June 12, 2004