Budget Challenge 2025/26 – 2027/8

Between November 2023 and February 2024, the Council undertook a widespread engagement exercise to help inform its budget for the next three years. 

Over 3,500 separate responses were received from the public over this period which helped shape the budget savings and income generation ideas that the Council then agreed to.

At its meeting in February 2024, the Council agreed a £54.6m package of savings over 3 years.  This included a range of savings that focused on redesigning services, changing how we use and manage our properties, delivering efficiencies and on generating income.

Nationally, the financial picture for the public sector remains challenging.  Inflation and interest rates are higher than we would like, and other pressures mean that we must continue to review our budget planning and seek to save money by changing how we do things and increase the income that we generate.  

It is important that our budget continues to be informed by the ideas and suggestions from our communities and our staff. The ideas we received last year have been put into action but we know that there continue to be other areas for improvement and how we could generate income.

We want to share with you what you told us last year and what we are doing but want to hear what further ideas you have.