The county council is currently facing the challenge of balancing its budget for the coming year (2025-2026), in the face of spiralling demand for our services and increasing costs.
We want to make sure we are spending the limited resources we have on the things which will make the most difference to you, our residents.
The cost of providing services is currently £38.5m more than the funds we have available. We remain totally committed to delivering services that support our communities and vulnerable people, but we will face tough decisions if levels of funding are not addressed nationally.
We will continue to lobby government for sufficient, long-term funding, but in the meantime, we must look for ways to bridge this budget gap, which is by no means an easy task.
Many residents are unaware of the breadth of services we provide for the 900,900 people that live and work in West Sussex. It’s a difficult and challenging task to balance the budget while still providing widespread and often complex services.
West Sussex County Council provides around 80% of local government services, and everyone is bound to come into contact with us, if not daily, then more regularly than you might think.
Major services provided by the county council include adults’ and children’s social care, education and schools, roads and transport, public health, fire and rescue, and libraries.
But there are many more not so obvious examples, which show how we help to improve the lives of residents:
- Our Trading Standards officers take action against rogue traders and dishonest businesses and protect residents from scams or dangerous goods.
- Last year our fire service officers visited 5,335 people at home to help them improve their fire safety and keep safe and well.
- We helped 4,616 local businesses either to start, revive, innovate, or grow.
- Our registrars are there to help and support you when registering a birth or death, and they even marry just over three thousand couples every year.
- We manage and maintain 2,500 miles of public rights of way, so if you’ve taken a walk, cycled, or ridden a horse in West Sussex, it would most likely be on a path maintained by us.
We’re acutely aware of just how many people rely on our services, day in, day out, whether they realise it or not.
When we plan our budget, we keep in the forefront of our minds that it is your money we are spending, and we need to ensure the money is spent in the right places to deliver cost-effective services.
That’s why I’m urging you to complete the consultation we are currently running, to let us know your views on how we should spend money on your behalf, and what approach you think we should take to balance our budget.
Please help us to get this right by taking part in our consultation. You can find details at www.westsussex.gov.uk/budget and it runs until Sunday 15 December.
You can find out more about what the county council does and the services we provide in our Annual Report for 2023-2024 at www.westsussex.gov.uk/AnnualReport.
