Budget Consultation 2024/25

2024/25 Budget - Have your say on Dacorum Borough Council’s spending priorities.

Introduction

We are working hard to balance the budget for 2024/25 and we need your input into the main spending priorities for the Council’s limited budget.

Within Dacorum there are two main Councils providing services to residents – Dacorum Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council.

Dacorum Borough Council provides the following services:

• Waste Collection
• Maintaining parks and playgrounds
• Street cleaning
• Environmental Health like pest control, food inspection and anti-social behaviour
• Licensing
• Funding for Voluntary and Community Groups
• Planning Services including the Local Plan, planning permission and enforcement
• Parking Services- providing on and off-street parking
• Garages
• Housing Advice and Benefits including homelessness services, providing those in housing need and processing housing benefits, council tax support and discretionary housing payments.
• Economic Development and town centre regeneration.
• Support to local businesses.
• Adventure Playgrounds
• Leisure Services
• Community Events including Halloween Old Town Fireworks
• Arts venue the Old Town Hall
• Cemeteries and a Crematorium
• In addition, Dacorum Borough Council also provides Council Housing, which by law is separately funded fully by housing rents and charges.

*This list is not an exhaustive list but the key customer facing council services.

Hertfordshire County Council provides these services:

• Adult and Children’s Social Care including fostering and adoption
• Schools and Education
• Libraries
• Highways, Roads and Pavements including street lights and potholes
• Waste strategy and waste disposal
• Fire and Rescue
• Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages and Citizenship
• Public Health such as sexual health services, stopping smoking, drug and alcohol treatment, weight management, school nurses/young people services and protecting the public from disease and major health emergencies
• Trading Standards.

Within Dacorum, some areas also have Parish Councils who set their own budgets and precepts independently of Dacorum Borough Council.

This consultation relates to Dacorum Borough Council’s budget. It is your opportunity to find out more about the budget proposals and have your say. See agenda item 7 of the Finance and Resources Overview and Scrutiny committee.

Why are we doing this?

In recent years, there have been huge financial pressures on households, businesses and organisations. Councils are also facing large increasing costs and at the same time more residents are finding themselves in need of our support. Continuing to provide all our services in this climate is challenging.

In addition, our funding from Central Government is significantly reducing and in the next four years the Council must make savings of £4.4m. In 2013/14, we received core government grants of £9.2m, in 2024/25 it is predicted to be £4m.

To ensure we can continue to support our residents including the most vulnerable residents, we have to make difficult decisions around money and how we provide our services in the future.

What is proposed: Full proposals (Opens in new window)

We are proposing to allocate the 2024/25 budget in a similar way to the 2023/24 budget, incorporating changes for government grants, inflation, demand for services, legislation and probable risks and opportunities.

Equalities Impact Assessment

The relevant Equalities Impact Assessments will be undertaken as the individual projects that form the Council’s budget are implemented.

How you can find out more

Visit the document library for:

• A document (Budget proposals report) outlining the full proposals
• A copy of our consultation survey in case you would prefer to respond in writing

To translate this page into another language, please use the ‘Select language’ button at the bottom of this page.

What happens next?

Once consultation ends on Monday 8 January 2024 we will consider all the responses received and prepare a consultation report.

The consultation report will help us reach a decision about how we allocate our limited budget. We will consider all the feedback we receive and use the findings to help us develop the draft budget further before it is finalised and agreed by Full Council in February 2024.

The report will be available to everyone that takes part in the consultation and a copy will be published on our website.