Draft budget consultation 2025/26

We're seeking your views on our proposed 2025/26 budget.

Our draft budget for 2025/26 is balanced, meaning the amount we intend to spend is around the same as the income we expect to receive. We have achieved this through identifying and planning savings.

Breckland has had to manage increasing demands recently, particularly for waste services and temporary accommodation - costs for the latter have increased from £100,000 to £2m over the last decade. Despite this, funding from central government has not kept up with our rising costs, and over the next few years this is expected to be around £1m less than it was a decade ago. 

However, due to our previous strong financial management and efficiencies programme, we are predicting no cuts to any of our core services in the 2025/26 budget. We have put forward a draft budget which: 

• Protects frontline services 
• Reallocates funding to services with known demand pressures 
• Maintains core services 
• Continues to invest in our corporate priorities 

As your local district council, Breckland Council is responsible for collecting council tax from residents and businesses. However, we keep only 5p from every pound we collect from households. The rest of the money is collected on behalf of your local town or parish council (who get around 5p per pound), Norfolk County Council (around 76p) and Norfolk Police (around 14p).

We will be able to balance our district council budget if we increase annual district council tax by £4.95 for a band D property in 2025/26. Despite this, most people in the district will see a smaller rise, as around 75% of houses are in bands A-C which pay lower tax rates. For a typical Band D property in Breckland, that equates to around £119 per year for all the district council services, such as bin collections, planning, licensing, housing, and more.

Your overall bill will be higher than this, as it includes tax set by the other organisations referenced above - the county council, town / parish council, and police and crime commissioner.

Due to the continued uncertainty on levels of government funding in the funding reforms from 2026-27 onwards, we may have to make further savings in future years, depending on the outcome of the funding reforms and any transitional funding for the early years of the reform.

The draft budget is due to be discussed by our Cabinet in January 2025. You can see the draft budget in the Cabinet papers.

Feedback from members of the public and councillors will be used to inform any revisions to the budget, which will be presented to Full Council for consideration in February 2025.

You can view January's Cabinet papers online and share your feedback on the draft proposals for the 2025/26 budget by emailing consultation@breckland.gov.uk before midnight at the end of the consultation closing day of Thursday, 23 January 2025.