How will you balance the budget?

North Somerset Council is facing our most challenging financial situation to date. As of November 2024, our budget forecasts show a projected overspend in year of £23.6 million pounds - which represents 10% more than the approved budget.

We can see that some of these costs are likely to continue into future years which has increased our budget gap to over £53 million pounds for the three year period 2025 to 2028. 

Whist we have been able to identify some savings and mitigations to balance our in-year position and to close the budget gap, we still have more work to do. 

As part of our budget development work, we are now asking you to tell us what your priorities are and how you would look to balance the budget. 

• At the bottom of this page is an invitation to 'create your budget'. Once you click through to this you will see a list of service areas. Simply select each one to see the services that make up each area of the council and how much it costs to deliver these services. 
• You can select the 'i' beside each service for an explanation about what the service covers.
• You can choose to decrease spending for each service, by moving the slider to the left or the right. For some services you will not be able to decrease it past a certain level without the council being in breach of our statutory duties. 
• You can also choose to increase income sources to help balance the budget.

Your target is to reduce spending and/or increase income by £53 million pounds to balance the budget. One you have made your choices you can submit this for review. There are also options to leave comments. 

All information gathered as part of this budget simulator will be analysed to inform our budget development work. The consequences presented in this priority simulator tool are high level and indicative only.  Further work would be required to develop and assess the changes in services that would be required as a consequence of any budget changes.  Please note, this is just a simulation and does not directly decide how the budget is spent, but your participation helps us to understand the priorities of our communities so we can make informed decisions. 

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.