Council produces balanced budget amidst financial challenges

In a continuing acutely challenging financial context for local government, the council has worked hard to identify the further savings needed during the next financial year to balance the books until 2028. It’s also produced a detailed budget proposal for 2025/26 including how much it’s planning to spend on major projects and services, following consultation with residents.

The current financial year has seen demand rise further still particularly in four key services, namely adult social care, children’s social care, transporting higher needs children to and from school and providing temporary accommodation for homeless people and families. Cost and demand for these services mean they’re considerably overspent, particularly where ‘high needs’ children’s services are concerned as the cost to the council is higher than the grant provided by government for these services. Given that nearly 80% of the council’s budget is funded through council tax, the budget proposals recommend raising the base rate of council tax by 2.99%, alongside a 2% rise in the Adult Social Care precept, meaning a total 4.99% rise in bills next year, which represents an extra £1.77 per week for the average Band D home in 2025/26.

The council has worked extremely hard to find further savings, efficiencies and other mitigations to allow it to produce a balanced budget and is offsetting the rising costs by identifying £115.6 million in further savings and income. Alongside the savings made through becoming a unitary council, overall Buckinghamshire Council will have made savings of more than £230 million from the time it came into being in 2020 through to the end of this budget period in 2028.

The updated budget proposals for 2025/26 include a commitment to dedicate significant funding to key projects and priorities for residents. These include:

• Extra funding for our roads, taking the total investment to £120 million
• £24.8 million to support regeneration
• £10.7 million on climate change and flood management
• £24.8 million to support housing and homelessness
• £188.8 million on schools and school improvement projects
• £30.4 million on our Household Recycling Centres, Waste vehicles and other waste projects

Buckinghamshire Council Leader Martin Tett said:

“We remain in a period of extreme turbulence with the local government sector as a whole currently on a financially unsustainable footing. We know the new government is proposing sweeping change to how local government functions but the truth remains at the moment that there simply is not enough money in the sector to pay for the services local councils must deliver however local government is organised, and particularly where there are key services that we are legally obliged to provide and upon which central government inspects us.

"We are working incredibly hard to find efficiencies and redesign local services to allow us to produce a balanced budget and still invest in our county and the services we provide to our residents. We’re developing our own children’s homes and recruiting more foster carers to save nearly £40 million on placements for children we are looking after. We’re building our own temporary accommodation units to save more than £2 million paying for expensive accommodation for people who need it.

"Doing things differently like this is allowing us to put major funding behind our road network, schools and improving our town centres, focussing on the future of our county and making improvements for our residents.

"The reality is that we cannot keep chipping away or using dwindling reserves to pay for the essential services that our residents need. We are also seeing the new government directing funding and resource away from the South East northwards to cities and towns in the Midlands and the north of England. This negatively impacts us here in Buckinghamshire; I remain proud however of our financial prudence and am pleased our budget plans demonstrate significant investment where our residents want us to spend their tax.”