How will you balance the budget?
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All of the income and expenditure associated with the delivery of council services is charged to the annual revenue budget.
The council receives money to fund the annual revenue budget from several sources. Income is received from customers who pay to use some of our facilities and discretionary services, for example, leisure centres, car parks, garden waste collection and social care. Income is also received from grants and contributions, council taxpayers and businesses who pay business rates.
The council's gross budget for the year is £461.6m with a net budget for the year is £217m. (this being total expenditure on council services less income and funding and excludes town and parish precepts).
*Note - the annual revenue budget is completely separate to the one-off grant monies that we receive from the government to fund specific works. For example, monies to help repair the roads or build new schools and bridges or fund improvements in our bus, rail and road networks.
Our latest financial report shows that the council is experiencing significant financial pressures this year (2024/25) and are forecast to overspend the budget. The majority of the overspend relates to an increase in demand for social care services compared to our previous assumptions. Services in this area are statutory which mean that the council must provide help and individual care and support packages to all adults and children who have an assessed need. These costs are likely to continue into future years and so we need to include more money in the budget next year to reflect the increased levels of demand.
We also need to increase our budget to reflect the inflationary price rises on our costs which means that in total, spending is likely to increase by £40m in 2025/26.
We have also looked at our income to estimate how that will change in the future - we anticipate that this will rise by £15m next year, which is £25m less than our cost increases.
We describe the £25m shortfall as a budget gap.
There are similar budget gaps in 2026/27 (£19m) and 2027/28 (£9m) which means that the council has a total budget gap of £53m over the 3-year period 2025-2028.
We would like to hear from you so that you can share how you would balance the budget.
This tool has been designed so that you can look at the different areas of the council's budget and make choices to increase or decrease spending and income.