Corporate plan
Your council, your way
Residents are at the very heart of what we do. There are lots of different ways for people to get involved, shaping the Council’s knowledge, plans and policies and keeping up to date on news and views.
Councillors and committees
Being democratically accountable and having good governance is essential to any council. Buckinghamshire Council achieves this through rigorous scrutiny of its processes and decisions through a number of Committees, including its extensive Select Committee work.
In May 2023, the Boundary Commission for England concluded the Buckinghamshire Electoral Review and published its final recommendations. These were that with effect from May 2025 (the next Local Council Elections), the number of Councillors on Buckinghamshire Council will be 97 (50 fewer than currently). There will be 49 wards as currently, but these will be represented by a variable number of councillors rather than the current uniform three members per ward. There will be ten three-councillor wards, 28 two-councillor wards, and eleven single-councillor wards. A review of the existing Committee structure for the Council will be undertaken ahead of implementing these changes in May 2025.
Our website helps you find your local councillor and see which meetings are coming up and decisions that are being taken. To make sure the council is open and transparent, agendas and minutes of meetings are available online, with many meetings being webcast and in public.
Getting involved:
Community boards
Our Community Boards across the county focus on bringing change and improvement to their local communities. They bring together councillors and local communities to engage with each other to decide how to help solve local issues, take local decisions, and influence local service design and delivery. Community Boards deliver their local priorities and change through engagement and partnership working, and have a small budget to support projects as needed.
Neighbourhood plans
We continue to provide guidance to town and parish councils to support them to develop and deliver Neighbourhood Plans and produce regular local planning updates for local councils.
Our five local Planning Committees and Strategic Sites Committees continue to meet regularly.
Inform, consult, and involve
We believe engagement should be meaningful, timely, inclusive, and direct. We want local people to help shape any proposals that affect the services they use or the areas where they live and work. We want to hear the voices of those most affected. It is important to us that local people - including the young, community groups, businesses, partners, and staff - are involved, working together on developing and testing solutions and services. We are constantly looking to develop and improve on this.
Customer focused
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, and we work hard to deliver excellent services to our residents. We understand the need to adapt to the changing digital landscape and ensure that our services are easy-to-access, efficient, and responsive to the needs of our customers. We offer multiple channels of communication, whether it be online, via telephone, or through in-person interactions at our Council Access Points.
We are enhancing our website content to make it more accessible and informative, with a focus on high demand services, such as Waste, Planning, School Admissions and Home to School Transport. We have also improved the way our customers can contact the Council online, ensuring that enquiries reach the right teams without delay.
We are planning to introduce a booking tool for appointments with professional officers for more complex service requests. We want those who need professional guidance or who are in vulnerable situations to be able to speak to the right person and get the assistance they need.
To support our customer focus, we have a Customer Experience Framework which we call ‘Customer First.’ This framework is based on three promises that we make to our customers about the experience they should expect :
- Easy: We make it easy for you to get in touch with us and get what you need
- Helpful: We aim to get things right first time and provide helpful solutions
- Fair and honest: We are clear about what we can and can’t offer, and the reasons why
As part of this framework, we regularly review our own services to assess how well we are delivering on our Customer First vision and ethos, and where we can make further improvements to enhance the customer experience
Our equalities commitment
Buckinghamshire Council is committed to equality of opportunity, fostering good relations, and eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
We recognise, respect, and celebrate the fact that our staff and the people we serve are diverse, whether this is our age, disability, ethnicity, family setting, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or belief. We will work with our partners to promote equality, celebrate diversity, improve social inclusion and mobility, and ensure fairness for everyone.
Contact us
Most information about our services can be found on this website.
To contact us about this plan use our online contact form.
You can also follow us on social media: @BucksCouncil on X.
Join our customer partnership panel and help us shape our services
If you can’t contact us online, call us on 0300 131 6000
If you can’t hear or speak on the phone we provide a text relay service: