Decision details

The Executive Member for Finance and Governance submitted a report for Executive consideration.

The purpose of the report was to seek approval of the budget development approach and timetable for the 2025/26 budget and MTFP for the four-year period 2025/26 to 2028/29.

Each year the Council engaged in an annual financial planning and budget setting cycle that aimed to achieve a balanced annual revenue budget and capital programme, set the council tax, and set out the capital and treasury management strategy. A high-level summary of the financial planning cycle was summarised in Table 1 with. a more detailed timetable set out in Appendix 1 on page 11 of the document pack.

The annual financial planning cycle involved the periodic review and updating of financial planning assumptions in the light of new information and data at key stages of the financial year in order to inform the Council’s budgetary control, financial forecasting and medium to long term financial planning.

During the 2023/24 financial year, the Council started to develop its plans for how it would improve, modernise, and transform the delivery of its services for 2024/25 and over the medium term to 2026/27. This work was undertaken in order to meet the significant financial challenge that was identified in the updated 2024/25 MTFP, and in order to respond to the statutory recommendations made by the External Auditor in August 2023.

The Mayor thanked everyone for their involvement in the report and expressed the desire that the next budget setting process should be as cross-party as possible.

ORDERED

That Executive approves the proposed budget development approach and the timetable for the 2025/26 budget setting and MTFP for the period 2025/26 to 2028/29 as summarised in Table 1 and detailed in Appendix 1.