How your Council Tax is spent
Council Tax makes up 81% of our external income. We no longer receive any general funding from central government.
Our costs continue to rise due to inflation and we have an increasing demand for services to protect, support and care for our vulnerable adults and children. We're more dependent than ever on the income we receive from Council Tax to deliver the services our residents rely on each day.
Your Council Tax helps pay for vital local services, including:
- housing
- caring for people in need
- roads and transport
- libraries
- protecting our environment
- some waste services (excluding bulky, garden and commercial waste)
- recycling
How the council is funded
| Source of funding | Percentage of our funding | Amount of funding |
|---|---|---|
| Council Tax | 81% | £406.7m |
| Business Rates | 13% | £66.1m |
| New Homes Bonus | 1% | £3.6m |
| Other grants | 5% | £27.9m |
Who spends your Council Tax
When you pay your Council Tax, this money is shared with other local service providers.
- Buckinghamshire Council
- Police and Crime Commissioner for the Thames Valley Area
- Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority
- Parish and town councils
View parish precepts for 2023/24 PDF,210KB
Buckinghamshire Council has a total budget of £504.3 million for 2023/24.
How we plan to spend it
Revenue budget
In this year’s budget there is additional investment in both Adults (£24.9m) and Children’s Social Care (£15.3m) budgets to address the continued increase in demand, cost and the complexity in these service areas.
| Portfolio | Main services | Net budget | Percentage of total budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accessible Housing & Resources | Business Operations, Customer Services, Finance, Revenues & Benefits, Human Resources, ICT, Property & Assets | 56,890 | 12% |
| Climate Change & Environment | Environment, Street Cleaning & Waste | 16,963 | 4% |
| Communities | Community Boards, Community Support and Community Safety | 7,053 | 2% |
| Culture & Leisure | Culture, Sport & Leisure | 4,623 | 1% |
| Education & Children's Services | Children’s Social Care and Safeguarding, Education and Schools | 102,967 | 23% |
| Health & Wellbeing | Social Care for Adults & Public Health | 184,669 | 40% |
| Homelessness & Regulatory Services | Homelessness, Housing, Environmental Health & Cemeteries | 9,799 | 2% |
| Leader | Policy & Communications, Economic Growth & Regeneration | 5,758 | 1% |
| Planning & Regeneration | Building Control, Development Management, Planning Enforcement. Strategic Planning | 7,064 | 2% |
| Transport | Highways, Parking, Buckinghamshire Highways | 61,785 | 14% |
| Portfolio Budgets total | 457,571 | 100% | |
| Corporate costs | Capital Financing, Treasury Management, Corporate Contingency budgets, Other | 55,569 | |
|
Use of / Contributions to Reserves |
(8,801) | ||
|
Net operating Expenditure |
504,339 |
Capital programme
| Portfolio | Expenditure | Percentage of total expenditure |
|---|---|---|
| Leader | 35,606 | 20.8% |
| Accessible Housing and Resources | 11,813 | 6.9% |
| Education and Children’s Services | 28,621 | 16.7% |
| Climate Change and Environment | 9,644 | 5.6% |
| Culture and Leisure | 6,520 | 3.8% |
|
Homelessness & Regulatory Services |
6,577 | 3.8% |
| Planning and Regeneration | 18,911 | 11.1% |
| Transport | 52,430 | 30.7% |
| Corporate | 750 | 0.4% |
| Capital expenditure | 170,872 | 100.0% |
Over the next 4 years, we'll be investing:
- £142.5 million on schools, and school improvement projects
- £130.5 million on Strategic Highways maintenance, including:
- £68.1 million on major highway resurfacing schemes (including an additional £5 million investment for 2023/24 to allow the Highways teams to intensify and extend their repairs to our roads from April 2023 onwards)
- £17.7 million on Plane & Patch (smaller planned and reactive repairs)
- £12.0 million on road reconstruction
- £8.6 million on footway repairs
- £8 million on drainage to help reduce flooding on our roads
- £6.8 million on Street Lighting repairs, replacement and maintenance
- £100.3 million on Strategic Transport and Infrastructure
- £33.7 million to support economic growth and regeneration
- £20.0 million to support housing and homelessness including affordable housing action plans and disabled facilities grants
- £20.7 million investment in waste, primarily on vehicle replacement and household recycling facilities
- £14.3 million on climate change and flood management