Budget 2025-26
The council is facing a three-year budget gap of £62m, which is on top of more than £200m already removed from its budget since 2012/13.
We have had to make savings over many years and even though the council has a net budget of around £1 billion, the situation is now so severe that further savings are likely to be considered to save £21.5m from next year’s budget.
Over the last ten years, the core settlement from the Scottish Government has not increased in real terms, which means that it has not kept pace with the cost of delivering services. This has meant that almost a quarter of a billion pounds has been removed from the council’s budget to make savings.
On top of these cuts, the council is facing significantly increased cost pressures such as inflation, and increased service demand pressures through for example, an ageing population and people living longer with more complex care needs.
In addition to the real terms reduction to the Scottish Government core grant to the council, the government also instructs or directs the council on what some elements of the budget should be used for such as for criminal justice, pupil equity funding, maintaining teacher numbers, funding for pay awards and adult health & social care.
This means that we cannot utilise the funding to manage council budget pressures. This puts even more pressure on other service areas to try and make savings.
The estimated budget gap for each year is broken down as:
- £21.561m for 2025/26
- £21.320m for 2026/27
- £19.095m for 2027/28
Budget breakdown 2024/25:
- Scottish Government funding - £844m
- Council Tax – £169m
- Other - £3.75m
- Total - £1,016.75m