Government criticised for failing to recognise financial pressures as county council sets 2026/7 budget
Oxfordshire County Council leader Liz Leffman says government has “failed to recognise” the pressures and challenges the authority and fellow county councils face in delivering critical services.
Her comments came at the budget-setting meeting of the council on Tuesday, 10 February. The council has been able to deal with a budget shortfall of £5.4m while still investing extra in adult social care (£14m), children’s services (£19m), highways, libraries and other services.
However, the authority already knows that it will need to find further savings of at least £15.5m from 2027/28.
The government will cut grant funding by £27.2m by 2028/29 and assumed the council will make up most of the difference with maximum council tax rises. The effect of this is that the county council will have to put up council tax by 4.99% each year only to see a lot of this money immediately being subtracted by the government and sent elsewhere.
Cllr Leffman said in her speech at the meeting: “We recognise that there are areas of the country with higher levels of deprivation than our own, and it is right that the people in those places receive the support that they need, but this government has failed to recognise the pressures and challenges that we and other county councils face in delivering critical services across a wide rural area.
“In spite of the constraints, and because we have managed our finances very carefully over the past few years, we have not only been able to balance the budget for 2026/2027 but have included investments that will make a difference to the things which are of greatest importance to our residents.
“I am confident that with the investment that we are making in our highways network, with our surface dressing programme for example, along with the new Highways Asset Response Teams that have been out and about in Oxfordshire since the autumn, we will see a significant improvement in the forthcoming weeks and beyond.
“Flooding has become a regular event in many parts of the county thanks to climate change, and we have recognised the importance of tackling this.
“The decision last year to clear all our gullies on an annual schedule has revealed that much of our drainage system is in urgent need of repair, following years of neglect.
“We therefore propose to allocate £2 million in our capital budget to repairing our drainage system, bringing the total to be spent on our drains and gullies in 2026/2027 to £3.2 million.
“Our library refurbishment programme will continue, with an investment of £550,000 in Didcot coming next, following successful refurbishments in Chinnor, Henley and most recently Witney, where 200 new registrations for library tickets were received in the week following its reopening.”
Councillor Dan Levy, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, said: “We face great pressure because of funding cuts and demand pressures, and there is still lots of uncertainty in areas like SEND provision. Money is being redistributed away from Oxfordshire and other areas on a large scale by the government.
“However, we are confident not only that we are setting an ambitious balanced budget for next year, delivering services to residents, but also that we are ready to face the more difficult years ahead.”
Note to editors
By 2028/29 there is a reduction of £24.1m in funding from central government compared to 2025/26. Within that there is an increase of £3.1m in funding for the Families First Partnership that the government will expect the council to use to fund new investment and activity in preventative services for children’s social care. Excluding that, the underlying reduction in grant funding is £27.2m