Money Matters: Have your say on Buckinghamshire Council's spending priorities for 2025 to 2026

Overview

We want to know which services you think should be the main priorities in our budget for next year, and what you think about our plans for how next year's budget should be spent. 

The cost of living crisis continues to affect many of us across the country, including individuals, businesses and organisations.

Councils are no exception to the pressures of this crisis; they are also facing a steep rise in costs whilst also hearing from more and more people who need the help and support that councils can offer.

We want to ensure we can continue to provide this help and support to you, the people of Buckinghamshire. However, to be able to do this, we are having to make some difficult decisions about how we provide our services for the next financial year.

You may have already seen the news that several councils have stated they cannot meet their costs. In Buckinghamshire, we remain in a stable position, which we have been fortunate enough to maintain for the last few years.

Since becoming a unitary in 2020, we have worked hard to become more efficient and reduce our running costs. As a result of our efforts, we have saved £75.4 million to date. This year we must save a further £41.3 million. This would take our total savings to over £100 million in our first five years as a council, which is an impressive feat when we consider the challenges we have faced along the way.

We are once again faced with the difficult task of balancing the books whilst battling with rising costs and an increase in demand for our services.

Maintaining the provision of four legally required services – Adult Social Care, Children’s services, Home to School Transport and looking after homeless people – makes up 71% of our expenditure. To continue providing the rest of our services with less than 30% of our expenditure available, means difficult decisions are necessary. These decisions will not always be popular. They may look like an increase in parking charges, a change in library staffing or a reduction in some highways services.

In order to remain financially balanced, we have to accept that these decisions will mean reducing what we do and the resources we have.

With this in mind, we are asking for your feedback.

We are working up plans for the council’s 2025 to 2026 budget and we need you to tell us how you think we should be spending your money.

In considering your response, please do take time to reflect on the wider needs of the whole of Buckinghamshire in addition to the specific priorities for yourself, your family, your immediate community, your business or your organisation.

How the council is funded

We provide more than 700 different services in total and our budget sets out how much we will need to spend on these services and where that money will come from.

The money we receive from council tax covers 79% of the cost of providing all of these services – from paying for care packages for adults who need it, to providing emergency accommodation for homeless people and vulnerable children, as well as the essential services everyone relies on like bin collections, road repairs and keeping streets and open spaces clean and safe.

The other 21% of the council's budget is funded by money from Business Rates (13%), the New Homes Bonus (1%) and other un-ringfenced grants (7%).

It’s also important to note that the funding for the running of our schools is not set or controlled by the council. We distribute this to schools on behalf of government as part of the Dedicated Schools Grant.

How your money is spent

All councils have a legal duty to limit their spending to the income they receive each year. In other words, our budget must balance.

Most of our budget each year needs to be spent on the services we are required by law to provide, such as social care for adults and children. This is known as ‘statutory’ spend.

The spending breakdown for the year 2024 to 2025 (net) is:

• Adult Social Care – £197,390,000
• Children's Social Care – £100,490,000
• Roads and Transportation – £66,841,000
• Waste and Recycling – £20,297,000
• Education (excluding Dedicated Schools Grant) – £15,888,000
• Customer Services – £11,642,000
• Housing and Homelessness – £6,998,000
• Planning – £6,061,000
• Culture and Leisure – £3,942,000
• Regulatory Services – £3,015,000
• Street Cleaning – £2,811,000
• Strategic Infrastructure, Town Centre Regeneration and Economic Growth – £2,468,000
• Community Boards – £2,116,000
• Community Safety – £1,888,000
• Environment – £1,283,000

We also spend £48,320,000 on the costs of running the council. This includes providing the following services:

• ‘Helping Hand’- our scheme for helping people struggling with the cost of living pressures
• Council Tax collection and Housing Benefit payments
• Legal and Democratic services, including elections
• Risk, Audit and Insurance services
• Information Communication Technology
• Finance
• Human Resources and Organisational Development

This adds up to a total net spend of £491,450,000 for 2024 to 2025 (total takes account of rounding).

Net spend is expenditure minus the income we receive from customers and ringfenced grants.

We are proposing to allocate the 2025 to 2026 budget in a similar way.

View detailed proposals in our Medium-Term Financial Plan 2024/25 to 2026/27.

How to have your say

You can tell us your views in one of the following ways:

• complete the online survey using the link at the end of the page
• complete, and return, a printed version of the survey (PDF 0.29MB)

If you have any questions about this activity, or require this information in another format or language, please email us at consultations@buckinghamshire.gov.uk.

Please tell us your views by midnight on Sunday 13 October 2024.

What happens next

We will consider all the feedback we receive and use the findings to help us develop the draft budget further.

A detailed draft budget will be published in late 2024 for further feedback and scrutiny. It will then be finalised and agreed in February 2025.

Privacy

We will use the information you provide here only for this activity. We will store the information securely in line with data protection laws and will not share or publish any personal details. For more information about data and privacy, please see our Privacy Policy.

If you have questions about data and privacy, please email us on dataprotection@buckinghamshire.gov.uk. Or write to our Data Protection Officer at Buckinghamshire Council, The Gateway, Gatehouse Road, Aylesbury, HP19 8FF.