Welcome to Herefordshire Council’s online Budget Simulator

How would you set the Council’s budget?

 

We want to hear your views on how the Council should develop a budget plan for 2025/26 to deliver the best for Herefordshire in everything we do, aligned to the priorities of the Herefordshire Council Plan 2024-2028.

 

The Council spends £500 million each year across a range of local services including providing social care for adults and children, addressing homelessness, maintaining the road network, emptying bins, and processing planning applications, and many more.

 

We continue to face pressures with demand for our services growing and the costs of providing services increasing.  Like all of us, the Council is having to manage its budget in a challenging economic environment and we need to look to the future to plan where to spend our funds.

 

The Council is already working to deliver over £19 million of planned savings in 2024/25 by transforming services, reducing expenditure and increasing opportunities to recover costs and generate income.  To achieve the ambitions of the Council Plan and ensure the Council remains financially resilient, we will need to continue to transform the way that we deliver services to residents and businesses.

 

We are waiting for confirmation of the financial settlement from Government in December and we are working to present a balanced budget in February 2025 but we still face a funding gap of £12 million next year.

 

We’d like you to share your views on how we should set our budget for the next financial year:

 

• Try our budget simulator to tell us how you would set the budget for 2025/26– managing movements in income and expenditure to deliver services within the available funding.  Your aim is to bring our £12 million gap as close to zero as possible.
• Share your views on the Council’s priorities and options for increasing the level of Council Tax for 2025/26.

 

The Consultation will be open until 11pm on 15 December 2024.

Please click on "More Info" for some instructions on how to complete the budget simulator.

How will you balance the budget?

 

Our services are under significant financial pressure and the Council faces a funding gap next year which means we need to make challenging decisions.  How would you close the funding gap?

 

• On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a list of service areas and sources of income.  Simply select each one to see the services that make up each area of the Council.
• Click on the ‘i’ beside each service or income stream for an explanation of what the service covers or the nature of the income.
• You can choose to increase or decrease spending for each service by moving the slider to the left or right.
• You can also choose to increase income from Council Tax and/or car parking to help balance the budget.
• There is a balancing tolerance built into the budget simulator, this means that you can submit your budget even if it is over/underspent by 1%. This is to support better response rates to this consultation.

 

Your target is to reduce spending and/or increase income by £12 million to balance the budget for 2025/26.

 

The consequences presented in this priority simulator tool are indicative only.  Further work would be required to develop and assess the changes in services that would be required as a consequence of any budget changes.

 

Once you have made your choices you can submit and add any comments. All information gathered will be used to inform our budget plans for 2025/26 and help us to understand the priorities of residents.

If you are viewing this on a smart phone, it is easier to view in landscape.

Accessible version of budget simulator can be viewed here.