Budget

2023 to 2024 budget

Detailed preparations for the council’s 2023 to 2024 budget started in September 2022 and were approved at the council meeting on 22 February 2023.

Impact of inflation

As with all households and businesses, the impact of high inflation dominated our financial planning. The council typically allocates around £2 million to £3 million each year to cover the cost of inflation. This represents the extra we need to spend just to maintain current service levels. For 2023 to 2024, we have had to set aside just under £10 million.    

Once we added the cost of rising demand for statutory services like Adult Social Care and income losses due to economic conditions, we knew it would be very difficult to cover the cost pressures we were facing, totalling £17 million.

Government funding

Given the national economic and political volatility in the autumn, it was not possible to accurately predict the level of government funding that would be available to help mitigate this situation.

We therefore aimed to cover what we felt was a “reasonable worst case scenario”. In this we would balance the 2023 to 2024 budget through a mixture of:

• savings
• use of our reserves
• additional council tax income

In the event, the funding settlement announced in December was a little better than expected. This meant that some of the most challenging savings we had identified have not had to be implemented.

Final budget proposal

Our final budget proposals still include:

• £7.5 million of savings
• use of £3.6 million of reserves
• raising council tax by 4.99%, the same increase as in almost all similar authorities (we remain in the lowest 10% of unitary councils, charging £182 less than average for a Band D property)

We recognise that any increase is unwelcome and for some households may be unaffordable. For this reason, working age households who get Council Tax Support will once again see a £100 reduction in their tax bill, while low income pensioner households who contribute to their bill will see a £50 reduction.

Any households who are struggling to keep up with their payments should contact Revenue Services who will be able to provide advice and support.

View our annual accounts

The following documents are our annual statement of accounts.

The financial statements include:

• the statement of accounts
• the narrative report
• independent auditor’s report

2022 to 2023 statements

2021 to 2022 statements

Important information about the 2021 to 2022 financial statements

The notice below explains the reason for the delay in the completion of the external audit of the financial statements for the year ending 31 March 2022.

2020 to 2021 statements

Older accounts

Treasury management reports

Further documents

How your money is spent 2024 to 2025