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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.

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.

Revenue budget 2023/24 (£000's)
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

Capital programme 2023/24 (£000's)
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

Previous years