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Buckinghamshire Council is preparing its spending plans for 2025/26 and is asking residents, businesses and other local stakeholders to give their views on which services should be prioritised.

The ‘Money Matters’ survey is the opportunity for residents to have a say on what’s important to them and how you would like to see the council’s budget distributed.

Councils across the country continue to experience significant financial pressures due to rising costs and added demand on services. In particular, Buckinghamshire Council has seen social care costs escalate even further in recent months due to more vulnerable residents needing help.

With continuing pressures on household budgets after a period of high inflation and other turbulence, it’s important that residents tell the council how they want to see their council tax spent during the next financial year.

Council tax is the main way that local council services are funded – from bin collections to road repairs to looking after adults and children who need care. The council has ongoing costs to provide these services and also draws up capital spending plans too – ‘one-off’ spends on particular projects or schemes such as extra money invested into the local road network for repairs and improvements. The money received from council tax covers 79% of the cost of providing our 700 services, with the rest of our funding coming from Business Rates (13%), the New Homes Bonus (1%) and other grants (7%).

The council’s ‘Money Matters’ survey is now live –and takes just 10 minutes to complete. These views are then fed into the final budget proposals which are scrutinised after Christmas in a series of special meetings. The final budget will then be voted on during February ready to ‘go live’ on 1 April 2025.

Martin Tett, Leader of Buckinghamshire Council, commented:

“Budget setting in recent times has become extremely difficult for all councils, including our own. Since becoming a single unitary council we have made significant savings and efficiencies already, totalling £75.4 million to date, with a further £41.3 million of savings earmarked for this year. This means we’ve taken more than £100 million out of our budgets over the first five years as a council to deliver efficiencies and to pay for key services for our most vulnerable residents. The cost of providing these services – namely social care, temporary housing and providing school transport for children who need it – eats up around 71% of our entire budget, leaving us with less than 30% of our expenditure available to pay for everything else that we do.

Therefore it’s never been more crucial for our residents to tell us where they want their money spent – please let your friends and family know too that they can have a say.”

The survey is accessed via the Your Voice Bucks website.

If you’re unable to complete the survey online, you can access a paper copy of the consultation in libraries and family centres.

The Money Matters survey runs until 13 October 2024.