Issue date: 20 February 2025
Every year the county council meets in February and decides the best way to use its resources for the year ahead. At a public meeting of the Full Council we debate and make decisions about how we will support the most vulnerable in our communities and where we will invest vital capital into our county.
For the coming year financial year, April 2025 to March 2026, we have agreed to spend more than £2.2 billion on vital services, with the vast majority of this going to schools, social care, recycling and waste disposal, and roads. This year we have needed to put in an additional £47.4 million for service demand pressures and continued additional investment in our roads.
We are facing extremely challenging times in terms of local government finances, particularly around social care, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and home to school transport, but I’m pleased to say we have been able to close our predicted budget gap and delivered a balanced budget without cuts to front-line services.
This has been achieved with spending reductions of £12.3 million, and an increase in council tax of approximately £1.65 per week for a Band D property.
We know any increase in council tax is far from ideal for our residents. But the alternative would have been to cut frontline services, and we wanted to do all we could to avoid this.
Whilst we have balanced the budget for this year, we will still unfortunately be facing increasing financial challenges in the years to come, as the pressures facing the county council outweigh the funding received from government. We will do all we can to continue to lobby ministers on the need for a national funding solution to meet the local needs for social care, SEND provision, and home-to-school transport for our communities.
So, in these challenging times, how do we go about making these decisions on how to spend our resources, a large amount of which is made up of your council tax payments.
Everything we do is focused on the priorities in our Council Plan, which are:
- Keeping people safe in vulnerable situations
- A sustainable and prosperous economy
- Helping people and communities fulfil their potential
- Making best use of resources
These priorities are underpinned by a cross-cutting theme of 'protecting the environment'.
I would urge everyone to read ‘Our Council Plan’ so they can read more about these priorities and why they are so important to us.
Following our budget public consultation last year, I was pleased to see that 75% of residents who responded agreed with our priorities, giving us the confidence that the limited funds we do have are being spent in the best possible way.
The future of local government in West Sussex, and Sussex more widely, will be shaped by plans for devolution and the re-organisation of councils into unitary authorities. The details of these are yet to be determined, but in the meantime, we will continue to deliver the vital services that support our priorities and which we know thousands of residents rely on every single day.
