Cherwell residents, businesses and communities are encouraged to participate in a budget consultation to help shape vital financial decisions.
Published: Friday, 24th November 2023
Like other councils up and down the country, Cherwell District Council faces significant financial pressures driven by rising costs, particularly in energy, fuel, and materials. These inflationary impacts highlight the need for savings or more income, all while ensuring the council maintains essential, high-quality services.
With the budget for 2024/25 requiring £1.5 million in savings, the council has diligently explored internal efficiencies and cost-reduction strategies.
Efforts include maximising in-house expertise for projects, securing additional grant contributions, using digital technology to streamline processes, and achieving better value from its contracts and suppliers, such as switching insurance providers.
These efficiencies will contribute £1.2million of savings next year and take the council a long way to bridging the budget gap.
The council has pulled together draft proposals to find the additional £0.3million of savings and income required to balance the budget. Residents are asked to review the proposals and provide feedback at Citizen Space.
The consultation runs until Friday, 22 December 2023.
Councillor Barry Wood, Leader of Cherwell District Council, said: "In these challenging financial times, maintaining our financial prudence and commitment to being a well-run, fiscally responsible council is more important than ever.
“We are dedicated to finding solutions that protect the services our residents value while navigating through these budgetary constraints impacted so significantly by the national economic picture and inflationary pressures that are seeing substantial increases to our costs.
"We recognise the importance of community input in these decisions, which is why we call for people to share their views during this budget consultation.”
Resident feedback will help shape budget deliberations scheduled for the council’s Executive on 5 February 2024. The final budget decision is planned at a full council meeting on 26 February 2024.