Wiltshire Council's budget approved as council continues to lead the way in prevention

Wiltshire Council's budget for 2024/25 was formally approved at a meeting of Full Council on 20 February 2024, with the council's prudent and preventative approach putting it in a strong position to deliver high quality services for Wiltshire's residents, businesses, and communities, in line with its Business Plan priorities.  

Through continued sensible financial management and action to mitigate the impact of the inflationary pressures, the council is forecasting a small underspend of around £634,000 for the 2023/24 financial year, creating strong foundation for this year's budget setting.

This coming financial year, 2024/25, an additional £36m has been added into the council's service budgets. Overall, the council's budget for 2024/25 stands at around £490m. More than half of that is spent on adult and children's social care services.

The most significant spending in 2024/25 will be on:

• Adult services - £179.4m
• Families and children - £70.8m
• Environment - £49.6m
• Highways and transport - £43m
• Education and skills - £38.9m

Cllr Richard Clewer, Leader of Wiltshire Council, said: "In contrast to some other local authorities that are unfortunately facing some difficult challenges, our finances are strong. This is down to two main factors - firstly we take a long-term approach, identifying where we know demand will grow and investing to mitigate that increase in need or demand. Secondly, we focus on prevention, and invest in those areas that we know will benefit residents and save money in the long-term. Prevention underpins everything we do - to use an old adage 'a stitch in time saves nine'.

"Our budget ensures we will significantly be investing in key services including highways maintenance, flood prevention, decarbonisation, our leisure services, enforcement and ensuring our town centres are supported to be vibrant places to visit.

"We're not immune to some of the challenges other councils are facing, but to ensure we are in the strongest position to continue to tackle the fluctuating rate of inflation and to deal with higher costs we have made the necessary decision to increase the council element of council tax by 4.99%. 

"However, the bottom line is that because of our robust, preventative and prudent financial management we can invest more money into the services we provide for our residents, businesses and communities."

Despite the challenging financial climate nationally, the council will still be investing in key services and programmes. It has allocated an extra £10m over the next two years to spend on filling potholes and a road resurfacing programme that will help to prevent potholes and other highways defects in all areas of the county. The investment will also fund more small, local repairs to the highways and verge repairs on rural roads. This is in addition to the £20.7m the council receives from the Government's Highways Maintenance fund for 2024/25, plus the £5.2m from the Department for Transport's recently announced Road Resurfacing Fund. The budget puts in an additional £1m investment into extra gully cleaning work and reactive pothole filling. This is on top of the £1m that was invested into improving drainage in 2022 and will effectively treble drain-clearing work since 2021.

£1m has again been allocated for the Wiltshire Towns Programme to help create and support vibrant town centres. The council is also focussing on strengthening its work around enforcement, building on the significant reduction in fly-tipping as a result of its work and campaign since 2021. A total of £650,000 will be invested in this area, with £250,000 of that allocated to increase the capacity of the planning enforcement team to address and resolve complex cases more effectively. 

The council will always look for innovative ways to provide high quality services at the best value for residents. The rolling out of Technology Enabled Care (TEC) is a project that will revolutionise the way support services may be delivered to adults, which will deliver savings but ensure people are still empowered to live full healthy and enriched lives.

The council's capital programme outlines the authority's commitment to invest over the next seven years. The capital programme for 2024/25 has been budgeted at around £285m and details the council's investment in the improvement and maintenance of the county's infrastructure. It is likely the capital budget will change throughout the year as it's common for timeframes on major capital projects to evolve, particularly taking into consideration the scale, logistics and complexity of the work typically involved - made even more so by the unpredictable nature of inflation at this time.

Some of the capital spend in 2024/25 will be on:

• Building and refurbishing council houses - £45m
• Structural maintenance and bridges - £21m
• A350 Chippenham and Melksham bypass ongoing work - £18m
• Trowbridge and Salisbury Future High Streets - £11m
• Highways investment plan - £7m
• Property carbon reduction programme inc. solar canopies - £5m
• Investment in leisure centres - £3m
• Trowbridge Leisure Centre - £800,000 (with more than £20m allocated in subsequent financial years)

The council will also Invest an additional £10m in creating additional SEND school places including creating resource bases at mainstream schools to provide young people with access to enhanced support, spending time in the base for specialist intervention while also joining mainstream classes.

It continues to be a challenging time with fluctuating inflation and continued higher energy prices, which put pressure on financial assumptions and contract management, made even more so by increasing demand for services, impacted by the ongoing pressures caused by the continued cost-of-living crisis. There is particularly high demand for adults' services, children's social care and SEND.

The council has outlined it is planning to make £19.7m in savings, the majority of which were approved in last year's budget setting process and are due to higher-than-expected inflation. This total also includes £4.9m of new savings proposals, which came out of a cost containment exercise by the council's management team, helping the organisation run as efficiently as possible in a preventative way and getting the most out of every penny it spends.

The council receives nearly 84% of its core funding from local taxes, business rates and council tax, and is dependent on increases in these to deliver services to Wiltshire's residents, communities, and businesses. Therefore, Wiltshire Council has confirmed a 2.99% increase for its element of council tax, plus a 2% levy to be spent solely on adult social care. This will mean an increase of £1.65 per week for those with a Band D property at an annual charge of £1,805.73.  

A number of other measures will be introduced by the council during 2024/25, including an increase in some fees and charges for some services such as leisure, some planning services and the garden waste collection cost going to £70 per year (around £1.34 a week). The council will also look to continue to work as efficiently as an organisation as possible by removing some vacant posts and reducing agency budgets. It will also look to lease vacant space across its estate where possible, making the absolute best use of its buildings.

The full budget papers can be found at Agenda: Council - Tuesday 20 February 2024 10.30am (opens new window).