Who are we consulting and why?
We are asking for your views about the budget for the next financial year (2022 to 2023), which we are currently drawing up. By law, we must balance our budget, and every year we publicly set out our spending plans.
For the current financial year (2021 to 2022), we set a net budget of £130.1m, which included investments to improve people’s lives, such as tackling the Climate and Ecological Emergency, improving local transport and helping the local economy recover.
Residents are now being invited to have their say on our spending plans for the coming year.
What are we consulting on?
Our challenge for the 2022 to 2023 budget
We face a significant budget challenge for 2022 to 2023 due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in demand for services such as Children’s Social Care, recruitment and supply chain issues, as well as inflationary pressures.
Read our Medium Term Financial Strategy report for further details.
Our plans
We are proposing to set a budget of £136.2m for 2022 to 2023. This will include significant investment in Children’s and Adult Services, increasing staffing levels in education to meet the demand for Children’s Services and funding care placements.
We also plan to allocate additional funding to tackling the Climate Emergency and investing in our Neighbourhood Services. This will allow us to expand our recycling teams to cope with the significant increase in kerbside and green waste being recycled by residents, and allow us to improve the pay of drivers to increase retention amid the national HGV driver shortage, reducing the risk of missed collections.
We are also predicting extra income for the coming year, including increases in income from parking charges and the sale of recycled material.
We asked for initial views on these proposals from December 15th 2021 to 4th January 2022. Thank you to all those who responded.
We have now published our draft detailed budget proposals and are asking for your views on them.
Read our draft detailed budget proposals (Agenda item 9)
To find out more about the background to these budget proposals, view the video of the Budget Forum on our YouTube channel, or view our Budget Engagement PowerPoint presentation.
How to take part
Follow us on social media or sign-up to our weekly e-newsletter to keep up to date with our news.
What happens next?
The detailed budget proposals will now be scrutinised and considered by councillors at the following meetings:
- Policy Development and Scrutiny Panels on 10 and 31 January 2022
- Climate Emergency and Sustainability Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel on 17 January 2022
- Children, Adults, Health and Wellbeing Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel on 18 January 2022
- Cabinet on 10 February 2022
Final decision
Final decisions about the 2022 to 2023 budget will be made at our Budget and Council Tax meeting on 15 February 2022.
Information about all budget meetings is listed on our calendar web page. Meetings will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel.