Have your say
We ran a consultation on our budget proposals from 19 December 2024 to 19 January 2025
Issues driving budget pressures
Rapidly rising demand for services, particularly for support for vulnerable people, and inflation, are increasing costs over the next four years:
- Children’s social care – a 60 per cent rise in demand and a 33 per cent increase in prices for placements have pushed up costs by £15m over the last two years
- Special educational needs and disability support - with 90 per cent more children having education, health and care plans compared to five years ago
- Construction price rises – costs for infrastructure schemes have been driven up significantly with inflation
The situation
We aren't at a crisis point. A combination of innovative initiatives and a reduced back office – which are both driving down costs by £33m - plus a Council Tax rise, means the books will balance next year but growing pressure on services could create a £96m budget gap by 2029.
Council leads are concerned that the ‘new’ money the Government announced for councils won’t cover all the extra costs from the Government's autumn budget. They're calling on the Government to ensure a funding shake-up benefits low-funded councils and rural areas.
Our fairer funding campaign
We are the lowest funded county and have been leading calls for Government to overhaul and modernise how funding is given to local government. If we were funded at the same level as neighbours Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, we'd have around £100m more each year - or over £200m compared to East Sussex.
How this affects the council's budget
The four-year plan shows rapidly rising demand for services, and inflation, are increasing costs by £214m. This is in contrast to expected extra income and savings of £123m. Around 75 per cent of our budget is spent supporting vulnerable people. This squeezes what can be spent elsewhere but we’re still fixing 7,300 potholes a year, supporting over 1,000 households to stay warm, gritting 1,300 miles of road each night during winter, and much more.
How we're driving down costs
Innovative projects helping us to to make ends meet include:
- Streetlight switch - upgrading 68,000 streetlights from sodium lamps to LEDs is cutting carbon emissions by a massive 85 per cent compared to 2008 and driving down costs by over £2m a year. The project has just scooped prestigious Highway Electrical Association award for Sustainable Project of the Year.
- Helping people live at home - rolling out ‘care tech’ - over 2,600 pieces of equipment, including falls detectors and GPS location trackers – is helping over 1,000 people to live independently at home for longer and reducing adult social care costs by £1.25m.
- Barnardo’s - teaming up with Barnardo’s to run eight children’s homes locally is on track to generate savings of £2.25m over four years.
The scale of the council’s budget
The council’s yearly budget totals £616m. We are one of the biggest organisations in Leicestershire, spending around £10m every week on crucial services for our residents.
Our budget
The budget at a glance:
- The books balance for next year by using reserves to manage a small gap – with a budget gap of £38m in 2027, rising to £91m by 2029
- £1m extra to support flood-hit communities - following the devastating flooding in the New Year, plus £500k until April
- £95m more to support vulnerable people – in response to huge increase in demand
- An increase on the current four-year capital programme of £28m to help fix potholes and repair roads - taking the total spend on roads and related infrastructure, major schemes and tackling flooding to £156m
- A Council Tax rise of 4.99% from April – generating an extra £20m, which covers only the National Living Wage and National Insurance rises before any increased service demand is taken into account
- £33m of savings – including redesigning services, reducing the cost of back-office support services by maximising digital technology and smarter procurement, plus £52m to bring spend on SEND more in line with Government funding
- A £439m four-year capital pot – to fund one-costs of building roads, social care accommodation, new school places needed to support new housing, and more
Council Tax
A 4.99 per cent Council Tax increase will start from April (including 2 per cent for adult social care). This increases bills by £1.54 a week for a band D house. Generating £20m, it only covers the National Living Wage and National Insurance rises.
Your Council Tax bill
The Council Tax you pay is shared between district councils, police, fire and parish and town councils who all set their own budgets.
Setting the budget
We consult on our proposals, analyse the results and take a report to our council’s Cabinet with final budget proposals – the council’s final budget was agreed at a full county council meeting in February.