Council sets balanced budget for year ahead
21 February 2025
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) has continued to protect essential services and tackle significant challenges whilst setting a balanced budget for the year ahead.
At their meeting last night (Thursday, 20 February) councillors agreed the authority’s final budgets and Housing Revenue Account whilst also setting Council Tax for 2025/26.
WNC, along with councils across the country, continues to face severe financial pressures caused by increasing cost and demand for both children’s services and adult social care. Despite this, the Council has managed to set a balanced revenue budget for 2025/2026 of £959.6 million (£431.8 million excluding the Dedicated Schools Grant).
WNC started its budgetary process this year with an anticipated shortfall of £53m for 2025/26 and embarked quickly on an early review of its finances, reducing the overspend to £39m by July, followed by a further major drive over the autumn to close the gap.
Key to helping the Council protect essential services whilst balancing the books in its fifth year as a unitary authority is the income it receives from Council Tax. The budget includes a Council Tax rise of 4.99%, in line with the Government’s threshold and representing an average increase on a Band D property of £1.71 a week, or £88.73 a year. This generates extra funding of around £19.2m – with 2% of the increase going towards funding adult social care.
The Council also continued to review, restructure and transform services within the organisation to find better, more efficient ways of working without adversely impacting the services it delivers to residents, generating efficiencies of around £25m for 2025/26.
The agreed budget also considered people’s feedback in the recent budget public consultation, which attracted nearly 400 responses from residents, businesses, partners and other stakeholders. It has also been subject to continuous review and scrutiny, including consideration by the cross-party group of members of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
“Setting our budget has once again been complex and challenging given the ongoing pressures on public sector finances and the increasing demand for children’s and adults services, which account for 58p in every pound of our budget in the year ahead.Cllr Malcolm Longley, Cabinet Member for Finance at West Northamptonshire Council
“Having identified a shortfall earlier this year we took a planned and prudent approach to reduce this, whilst always ensuring the needs of our communities remained at the forefront of all decisions and actions we made.”