At Kent County Council yesterday we passed the budget for 2025-26.
The circumstances in which we have set the budget remain difficult. Over the last few years, pressures in adult social care, children’s services and Special Educational Needs (in particular, in relation to transport) have outpaced the growth in our resources.
While we have made a lot of progress in the first two areas in the last eighteen months (SEN transport is now coming in under budget in the later stages of 2024-25), savings in adult social care are proving harder to realise, and our expenditure outside adults’ and children’s services is still set to fall in 2025-26. This is in spite of an increase in council tax of just under 5% (the referendum limit, although unlike some other councils we did not attempt to go beyond that).
In my remarks to the council I pointed out that, with public spending under pressure, the government leaning towards methods of distributing funding that do not work in Kent’s favour and many major areas of spending unlikely to be reformed in the near future, the situation will remain tough for the foreseeable future. “There is no cavalry coming over the hill. There is only the hill. So, we have to have a budget fit for that stretching environment, setting us up for a number of years, which is what this budget does.” We share these pressures with councils up and down the country.
The budget continues our savings and transformation programmes in core services, delivers the first part of a nearly £20 million savings package in discretionary expenditure and rebuilds our general reserves in recognition of that tough operating environment. Amendments put forward by opposition groups covered just 0.4% of the budget spend, and none were agreed by County Council.
You can find our media release here.
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