Today (Tuesday, 11 February), a meeting of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Full Council agreed a legal budget for 2025/26. Members prioritised investment in highways maintenance as well as in children who become looked after and building new schools.
Councillors acknowledged the challenges the council is facing with the demand for services, increasing complexity of need, inflation and market failures. Despite this, the business plan and budget process has been about listening to residents which is why more than £56million is being invested into highways maintenance.
The county council had to close a gap of £35.1m – with 73% of the Council’s net spend now being funded from Council Tax.
The council has prioritised several key areas, based on resident feedback through its Quality-of-Life survey, and are aligned to its vision to make Cambridgeshire greener, fairer and more caring:
- Investment of more than £56m in highways maintenance. This is to tackle the significant backlog of repairs, addressing resident concerns. This includes £14.5m for the day-to-day management of the highway and an additional £20m in planned maintenance including roads, pavements, drainage, bridges, safety barriers, traffic lights, public rights of way and cycleways.
- Sustaining critical adults and children’s social care, which includes £3m to cover inflation for local care providers and an extra £8m for the 5% increase in the Real Living Wage. An additional £9m for children who become looked after, £4.7m to support home to school transport services and £920,000 investment in capacity in SEND services.
- The council continues to support vulnerable communities, with an estimated £6m of Household Support Fund that will be delivered to support those most in need alongside investment in further improvements in our libraries through £1.3m already committed to the Libraries Plus programme.
It was agreed to increase Council Tax by 4.99% (2% of which is for Adult Social Services) – raising £20m of local income to help maintain and protect critical services for the most vulnerable communities. For most of our residents in Band A-D properties that will mean between an extra £1.04 pence to £1.55 a week.
Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “We’re prioritising our funding in several key areas to make our county greener, fairer and more caring. We have listened to residents, which is why we’re investing more than £56m in highways maintenance. Historically, we’ve seen underinvestment in highways, this has left us with a bill of more than £600m. We started the journey last year by nearly doubling our highway maintenance budget and we’re going to invest further – acting on residents’ concerns.
“Whilst this delivers a legal council budget for 2025/26, it has been a tough process. We, like many other councils up and down the country, have felt the demand on key services such as special educational needs and disability services. Between 2020 and 2024, there was a 70% increase in children with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), cost increases in home to school transport and in autism services over the same period. We do not receive the funding from Government to meet the needs of the growing population in Cambridgeshire, so we have done what we can to deliver value for money in the services we provide, whilst investing in what matters most to our residents.”
Cllr Elisa Meschini, Deputy Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, added: “We want to think differently, intervene earlier and engage with our residents, which is why we have a plan for the next five years and that includes new primary schools, investing to create in-county residential homes for children in care and helping the significant pressure felt by our services for adults and older people with care and support needs.
“We’re conscious that in future years we need to change the way we operate whilst still achieving the vision of a greener, fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire. This is why we agreed the ‘Our Future Council’ change strategy to reshape the way the council operates to improve efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. In all this we will make sure that we continue to listen to our residents.”
Cllr Tom Sanderson, Leader of the Independent Group on the council, said: “Our business plan and budget puts communities at the heart of what we are delivering. We know we need to continue supporting people suffering the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, which is why we established the Cambridgeshire Poverty Strategy Commission. This work will conclude and set out recommendations for us to respond to and I look forward to receiving. We will also continue to provide food vouchers for families in need during the school holidays and help people who are struggling with direct support.”
Members began debating the draft business plan and budget in December 2024. The scrutiny from all the council’s January policy and service committees, as well as feedback from our online public consultation (Business Plan and Budget 2025-26 Consultation Survey | Cambridgeshire County Council) and the views of Town and Parish Councils, other local and public authorities, business representatives and trade unions have contributed to the debate today.
The committee heard about the final Local Government Finance Settlement, which means over £98m of central government funding for Cambridgeshire in 2025-26. Our funding is also likely to be impacted by the anticipated Comprehensive Spending Review in Spring 2025 and the ambitions for Local Government Reorganisation set out in the Government’s recently published English Devolution White Paper.
Members also discussed the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Transport levy which the County Council contributes towards each year. The final levy was £229k lower than expected and with this additional funding now being available within the council’s budget, it is also being used to supplement the highways maintenance budget for the coming year.
Today’s business plan and budget is available to view on our website and the committee was live streamed on our YouTube channel.
