West Berkshire Council announces spending plans for 2025/26

West Berkshire Council has unveiled its budget for 2025/26 - setting out how it will spend £187m delivering services across the district and £73m on capital projects.

The plans contain a range of commitments focusing on the delivery of core infrastructure across the district, enhancing schools and other education facilities and develop provision for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

Delivering infrastructure improvements, the capital programme will see £73m invested in the district.

Among the projects scheduled for delivery next year are:

• £18.6m delivering a new solar farm at Grazeley
• Improvements to local roads and pavements including:
  • £12m on highway improvements
  • £400,000 on pavement improvements
  • £300,000 on bridge maintenance projects
• Improvements to local schools including:
  • £2.3m replacing eight classrooms at Falkland Primary School which are currently in old, pre-fabricated modular buildings
  • £1m providing two additional classrooms at Brookfields School
  • £886,000 on four new classrooms at The Castle School
• £2.4m on a nutrient neutrality programme to develop and deliver projects to reduce the nutrients entering the River Lambourn.
• £50,000 to provide real-time passenger information and other public transport infrastructure

The net budget for 2025/26 of £187m will be spent delivering statutory services for local residents. These services, used by residents daily including waste and recycling collections, maintaining open spaces, housing and education.

Listening to residents

As part of the preparation for this year's budget, West Berkshire Council consulted on a number of proposals affecting front line services. A total of 1,717 responses were received and after considering the feedback changes have been made to two proposals:

• Downland Sports Centre will remain open - a proposal had been made to remove it from the Leisure Management Contract with Everyone Active
• Streetlights will be dimmed in residential roads between 10pm and 6am rather than being switched off completely between midnight and 5am
• A proposal to cease providing the Adult Respite in the Community service - a short-term respite provision - has been discounted.

Improving our financial resilience

The Council has a strong history of financial management whilst delivering significant savings programmes and continuing to protect front line services in particular supporting vulnerable residents.  Over recent financial years, as significant pressures have been experienced in relation of adults and social care provision (a common theme nationally), the Council's reserves have been reduced. 

As well as delivering statutory services and building new infrastructure the budget is also looking to improve the financial resilience of the Council. Over the past five years, the Council has delivered savings of £25m representing 15.2% of the 2024-25 budget. To protect frontline services - and in particular support vulnerable residents - the reserves held by the Council have been reduced. They are currently at £4m - or just 2% of the net revenue budget. In the current year, the Council has needed to make the highest levels of savings in its history, and though good progress is being made, at quarter 2 there is a forecast overspend of £2.1m which will further reduce reserves. This puts the Council's reserves position at an unsustainable level.

To address this, the Council has written to the Government requesting exceptional financial support of £16m. If granted through a capitalisation request, this would see allocations to reserves to support the Council's financial resilience, and some support for the 2025-26 budget.

In making this request the Council is one of many across the country which feels it has no choice but to seek additional funding. In 2024, 19 other councils felt it necessary to request Exceptional Financial Support and a number of others are expected to follow this year.

The amount requested has been carefully considered and only covers the bare minimum required to be sustainable in the year ahead.

You can find out more about this here: Exceptional Financial Support - FAQs

Speaking about the budget, Councillor Iain Cottingham, Executive Member for Finance and Resources said:

"This budget reflects the harsh reality of the current financial climate that faces all councils across the country. As the demand and cost of statutory services that we provide to the most vulnerable residents in West Berkshire continues to rise, we continue to find innovative ways such as AI to improve our financial efficiency. It has been a significant challenge to set a balanced budget which underpins our Council Strategy."

Councillor Jeff Brooks, Leader of West Berkshire Council said:

"In setting our budget we must find the right balance between protecting the most vulnerable people across our District, improving the services we provide to all our residents and investing in our local economy.

"We must also make sure that our reserves are healthy to respond to growing pressures, particularly within our children and adult care needs, and be available as "rainy day money".

"There are tremendous financial demands across the country within local Councils and we are not immune to these pressures. We are spending much more on children and adult care - investing over £8m extra in this area in the next year as demand continues to grow.

"We are also transforming the way we do things, and you should see continuing improvements in our services. Greater efficiency has enabled us to invest in our sports centres and our libraries as well as our roads.

"We must protect, invest in and improve our services and I am confident that this budget will achieve these aims. Together - councillors and council officers - we will continue to deliver services you can be proud of, and which we are proud to deliver."

The budget is due to be considered for approval by Council on 27 February and before that will be discussed by the Scrutiny Commission on 11 February and the Executive on 13 February. These meetings are open to the public to attend in person at the Market Street offices in Newbury and to stream online via the Council's YouTube channel.

Hear more from Councillor Jeff Brooks

You can hear from the Leader of West Berkshire Council as he discusses the areas we prioritised in next year's budget, the challenges we faced and why we felt we needed to request Exceptional Financial Support from the Government. 

Revenue v Capital Financing

A question the Council is sometimes asked is why it has to make difficult decisions about the services it provides whilst continue to invest significantly in local infrastructure. It comes down to how these items of expenditure are funded and recorded in our annual financial accounts; business as usual day to day services that we provide are paid for by the money we receive from council tax and business rates are classified as revenue expenditure, whilst infrastructure such as new buildings is funded either by borrowing the money or by selling other assets held by the Council is classified as capital expenditure.

The Local Government Association provides more information on this area on its website:

The difference between 'revenue' and 'capital' finance

Local councils, together with all public bodies, receive separate funding for their revenue and capital spending and their financial systems must be able to separate the income and expenditure on revenue activities from the income and expenditure on capital activities. The distinction between revenue and capital spending is much stronger in terms of the sources of council finance than you might ordinarily expect to find in say the accounts of a business or other organisation.

Revenue - this is the council's day-to-day expenditure and includes salaries and wages, running costs such as fuel, utility bills and service contract payments. As a rule of thumb, if the expenditure is consumed in less than a year, then it is revenue. The council funds revenue expenditure through revenue income sources such as the council tax and charging users for the services they use.

Capital - if the council spends money on improving the council's assets, then this is capital expenditure. This would include purchasing new assets, such as land and buildings, but also refurbishing and improving existing ones. Capital expenditure is usually funded through capital income sources such as capital receipts and borrowing, though it can also be funded through contributions from revenue.

Councils need to ensure, and demonstrate, that they are complying with these rules by making sure that there is a clear separation between capital and revenue expenditure in all of its financial activities.

You can find out more about this on the Local Government Association website.