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.
More information on the service areas
Adult Social Care:
- Care and support services for older people and vulnerable adults which includes support for people:
- living at home
- living in care
- coming out of hospital
- with disabilities
- Mental health services
Children’s Social Care:
- Improving outcomes and actively promoting the life chances of children in care and care leavers
- Safeguarding and encouraging the welfare of children, including protection against child sexual exploitation
- Support for children with disabilities
- Fostering and adoption services
- Helping young people stay away from crime and avoid re-offending
Roads and transportation:
- Road maintenance including inspections, pothole and road repair, and emergency response
- Client, public and home to school transport
- Transport strategy, including our ambitions, policies and plans for future investment in local transport
- Keeping roads safe and improving the flow of traffic
- Rights of way, including footpaths
Waste and recycling:
- Collection and disposal of waste, including fly-tipping and littering
- Household waste recycling centres
- Converting non-recyclable waste into electricity (Energy from waste)
Education (excluding the schools’ Dedicated Schools Grant):
- School admissions, school improvement and school place planning
- Support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities
- Support for pupils not in education, employment or training
- Early help for children and young people
- Adult learning and skills
Customer services:
- Customer Contact Centre
- Face to face information, advice and support to residents at Council Access Points
- Digital and web services
Housing and homelessness:
- Advice when looking for a home
- Help if you’re homeless or at risk of homelessness
- Housing grants, loans and debt advice
Planning:
- Advice services and management of the planning application process
- Investigating alleged breaches and taking enforcement action where appropriate
- Building control
- Development management, including highways
- Strategic and local planning policy, including local development plans and neighbourhood planning
Culture and leisure:
- Country parks, parks and play areas
- Leisure centres
- Libraries
- Arts and culture
- Museums and heritage
Regulatory services:
- Cemeteries and crematoria
- Environmental health including food safety, health and safety in the workplace, pollution control and housing standards
- Trading standards
- Coroners
- Licensing
- Registrars and celebratory services
Street cleaning:
- Street cleansing
- Grounds maintenance
- Dog control
Strategic infrastructure, town centre regeneration and economic growth:
- Highways infrastructure projects
- Town centre regeneration
- Supporting the local economy through jobs, skills, homes and amenities
- Local partnerships between the council, community groups, organisations and local people to identify key local issues and take action to address them
Community safety:
- Crime, anti-social behaviour and drug or alcohol abuse
- Domestic abuse, sexual violence, stalking or harassment
- Extremism and terrorism
- Modern slavery and child exploitation
Environment:
- Protecting and improving the environment
- Tackling the challenges presented by climate change
- Energy and water management
- Flood management
Public Health services are funded by specific grants. This includes services such as support for stopping smoking, alcohol and drugs, eating healthily, ageing well and being more active.
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 11:59pm 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.
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