Balanced budget for 2025/26 proposed by cabinet

A balanced budget for 2025/26 has been proposed by Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet at its meeting on 28 January now that funding information from government and others has been analysed in detail.

In late December, councils across the country were given individual information on their grant funding for 2025/26.

In the autumn, Oxfordshire County Council had said that it would face a £25 million funding shortfall in 2025/26 before taking account of any new funding.

The impact of new money allocated to local government combined with local changes and a recommendation for a 4.99 per cent council tax increase in 2025/26 means proposals can be made to deal with this shortfall with some additional money to allocate to services.

A total of two per cent of the council tax increase would need to be ringfenced for adult social care under rules set down by central government.

Councillor Dan Levy, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, said: “Each year central government allocates grant funding to individual councils and this information is communicated in late December.

“Our finance team has been working its way through this information in fine detail. The analysis is that the council is now able to set a balanced budget in 2025/26 with some additional funding allocated to new priorities on a one-off basis.

“We still look to future years with some concern. While the 2025/26 financial year looks healthier, there remains huge uncertainty about the impact of funding reform that could reduce the funding available to the council beyond that.”

Changes to previous proposals

The combination of a proposed 4.99 per cent council tax rise and additional grant funding from government means the following one-off broad additions can be made to areas of the council’s budget with precise detail to be worked on later by officers:

• £2.1m for pro-active flooding measures and working with communities who have suffered flooding. This would be added to £1.5m new funding that has already been proposed for highway drainage.
• £1m to leverage investment in rail, including supporting active travel access, improvement programmes and the development of strategic cases and masterplans to prove the environmental, economic and community case for rail.
• £300,000 towards working with other organisations collaboratively on planning regeneration in Banbury Town Centre
• £1.3m for active travel measures to encourage walking and cycling would be added to the £500,000 for active travel in rural areas already proposed.
• £400,000 is proposed to support holding the price of a joint ticket (parking and bus fare) at Park & Ride car parks unchanged from 2024/25

A public consultation on the substance of the 2025/26 budget proposals ran throughout December and ended on 2 January 2025.

This followed extensive engagement with residents over the summer on their priorities, including on the budget. This was through the council’s annual residents’ survey and participatory engagement opportunities using an online budget simulator, focus groups and sounding boards for children and young people.

The feedback from this engagement is included in the Cabinet report along with the consultation responses.

Councillor Levy added: “At this stage these remain proposals. Cabinet has now set out its proposed budget and full council will finally set the budget on 11 February. In finalising our proposals, we have taken account of feedback from our budget engagement activity in the summer, from scrutiny committees in December and January and the findings from our budget consultation.”