Budget consultation 2024/25

Like many other Councils, we are facing a financial challenge as a result of increasing inflation and reduced funding.

Just like some of our residents, we have seen unexpected expenses this year. This includes rising costs of fuel, increased cost to run buildings and increased staff pay as a result of the national inflation. This means it now costs much more to run our services than it did two years ago before inflation started to increase.

On top of that we have seen our funding from the Government reduce in real terms by around 60% in the past 10 years. We are also expecting our Government funding to be further reduced as a result of a shake up of local government funding in the next few years. This makes dealing with these rising costs even harder.

Despite these challenges, we are confident that with careful money management, we can still provide essential local services which you have come to expect from your local council. We also want to continue to tackle the issues you have told us matter to you such as tackling the climate emergency, creating a good quality of life for all, helping our environment and delivering more affordable homes.

We have managed to save some money in the past, which allows us to cover next year's budget gap from our reserves. However, to address this challenge we are also actively looking for ways to reduce costs and increase income to manage our budget for the following year and into the future.

Key facts about our budget

-        As your district council we collect your council tax but on average we only receive 10% with the rest having to be passed on to the county council, police, fire and parish councils.

-        As your local district council we deliver over 50 local services while your county council, which is a different organisation, delivers others. We deliver services including waste collection, planning, licensing, housing and homelessness support, parking and leisure. Oxfordshire County Council is responsible for road maintenance (including potholes), libraries, adult social care, education, children's services and public health amongst many others

-        We are limited in how much we can raise council tax to fund local services (1.99%) and in the past two years the council tax increase for our council has been significantly below inflation

-        Our funding from Government has seen a huge reduction over the past 10 years which means in real terms our budget has reduced by around 60%

-        We charge for some services such as garden waste collections and building control. All the money made by these services goes back into delivering council services.