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Budget 2025/26

The council's proposed budget for 2025/26 will be considered by Cabinet on Thursday 13 February 2025.

Each year we have to prepare our budget and decide how much should be spent on the services we provide to the community.

Find how the budget is considered, where the council's income comes from, what we will be doing in response to the public consultation and how we plan to be spending your money in the coming year.
 

Budget summary

The budget lays out how much we plan to spend on each of our main services (net of fees and charges). We collect some of this money through Council Tax, but we have other sources of income including that from Localised Business Rates Retention (BRR), New Homes Bonus (NHB), Rural Services Delivery Grant (RSDG) and from investments.

We are required to set a balanced budget before the start of each financial year.

To do this we prepare detailed budget reports to enable the annual budgets for the General Fund and Council Tax, Housing Revenue Account (HRA), and the capital programme to be set.

Supporting strategies

As part of the budget setting process we publish number of supporting strategies each year. These include the:

Council Tax

Although we collect Council Tax from you the money doesn't just pay for our services. The majority of it goes to pay for the services provided by:

  • Essex County Council
  • the Police
  • Essex Fire and Rescue
  • town and parish councils

Uttlesford District Council keeps just under 8 pence in every pound of your Council Tax.
 

How the budget is considered

The budget proposals will be considered at 3 meetings.

Budget consultation

Every year we ask for feedback in the form of a public survey on what our spending priorities should be. The results of this consultation help us to decide on the priorities for the budget for April 2025 to March 2026.

The budget consultation was undertaken between 20 December 2024 to 12 January 2025. Read the  council spending - have your say consultation report (PDF) [451KB] on setting the 2025/26 budget.

The proposed budget

We are required by statute to set a balanced budget in advance of each financial year. 

The proposed budget shows a Council Tax requirement of £7,381,304, which is equivalent to £182.02 for a band D property, representing a £5.28 (2.99%) increase on the 2024/25 amount.

The forecast budget for 2025/26 is expected to be £854,000 above available funding. This means that we will have to use some of our reserves to balance the budget. The budget proposes that this general deficit is funded from our Medium Term Financial Strategy reserve. The  Medium Term Financial Strategy 2025/26 to 2029/30 (PDF) [166KB] sets out more detail around how the we propose to use this reserve.

General Fund budget

Summary of the 2025/26 General Fund budget

Directorate budgets

 

2024/25

£000

Adjustments

£000

2025/26

£000

Business Performance & People

1,196

(852)

343

Chief Executive

353

167

521

Corporate Services

1,591

(28)

1,563

Digital Innovation & Commercialisation

3,051

525

3,576

Environmental Services & Climate Change

2,863

283

3,146

Resources

2,827

321

3,148

Housing, Health & Communities

2,399

(473)

1,927

Planning

1,249

(146)

1,103

Net expenditure

15,529

(203)

15,327

Investment Property

1,944

(625)

1,319

Corporate Items

650

2,242

2,892

Transformation Costs

400

(400)

-

External Funding

(11,525)

717

(10,808)

Blueprint Uttlesford

-

(495)

(495)

Reserves

(232)

232

-

Council Tax Income

(7,056)

(326)

(7,381)

Total

(290)

1,142

854

 

See more information on the directorate budgets and proposed fees and charges in the  General Fund Budget and Council Tax 2025/26 report (PDF) [139KB].

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