Your council tax financial information
Introduction
The revenue budget includes our spending on day-to-day services, such as provision of care to older people, maintaining our parks and collecting waste. Setting our budget is very difficult. The amount of money we have to spend is limited by the Government, and our financial outlook is very severe for a number of reasons:
- a decade of austerity between 2010 and 2020, in which spending on services other than social care had to be reduced by 50% after inflation. This has made it much harder to make more savings now;
- the COVID-19 pandemic – we set stop gap budgets whilst we dealt with the immediate emergency and had to postpone looking for savings;
- recent cost pressures, shared by authorities across the country, including increases in the costs of looking after children and support for homeless households, as well as the long-standing pressures in adult social care;
- a new round of austerity is expected, which will lead to further cuts to local authority funding from 2025/26.
We have been able to set this budget after making savings, and by using our reserves. We are working on a sustainable plan as we know we will need to make more cuts, and control spending as much as possible to balance future budgets.
The budget provides for the same levels of service as the previous budget, with increases for growth pressures made only where essential to maintain service provision. In practice, this amounts to £48m, of which the largest amount is for adult social care.
The Council’s gross expenditure, and how this leads to the amount of Council Tax we require, is explained in the table below. Most of our gross expenditure is funded from other sources, and the net service expenditure is a better indication of how our spending has changed over time. Expenditure has increased since last year’s budget, mostly due to additional spending on adult social care.
Gross expenditure/council tax requirement
| Budget and council tax | 2023-24 (£) 000's |
2024-25 (£) 000's |
| Gross expenditure | 1,001,949 | 1,058,881 |
| Less income, incl government grants | (622,875) | (637,863) |
| Net service expenditure, excluding reserves and contingencies | 379,074 | 421,018 |
| Contingency/ other funds | 3,640 | 8,000 |
| Contribution to/(from) corporate reserves | (34,122) | (60,978) |
| Net expenditure | 348,592 | 368,040 |
| Funded from: | ||
| Retained business rates and government grants | (204,281) | (213,447) |
| Collection fund (surplus)/deficit | 580 |
(1,006) |
| Council tax requirement | 144,891 |
153,587 |
Council tax
Council tax at Band D (Leicester City Council)
- Change: +5%
- 2023-2024: £1,833.00
- 2024 - 2025: £1,924.63
Council tax at Band D (Police and Crime Commissioner)
- Change: +4.8%
- 2023-2024: £273.23
- 2024 - 2025: £286.23
Council tax at Band D (Fire Authority)
- Change: +3%
- 2023-2024: £79.29
- 2024 - 2025: £81.65
Total council tax at Band D
- Change: +4.9%
- 2023-2024: £2,185.52
- 2024 - 2025: £2,292.51
For further information about the council tax breakdown, please see:
Other information
Environment Agency: Trent Regional Flood & Coastal Committee
The Environment Agency, which levies the City Council for flood defence purposes, has supplied the following information:
The Environment Agency is a levying body for its Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Functions under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and the Environment Agency (Levies) (England and Wales) Regulations 2011.
The Environment Agency has powers in respect of flood and coastal erosion risk management for 2369 kilometres of main river and along tidal and sea defences in the area of the Trent Regional Flood and Coastal Committee. Money is spent on the construction of new flood defence schemes, the maintenance of the river system and existing flood defences together with the operation of a flood warning system and management of the risk of coastal erosion. The financial details are:
| 2023-24 (£) 000's |
2024-25 (£) 000's |
|
| Gross expenditure | 62,261 | 82,164 |
| Levies raised | 2,268 | 2,313 |
| Total council tax base | 1,904 | 1,930 |
The majority of funding for flood defence comes directly from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). However, under the new Partnership Funding rule not all schemes will attract full central funding. To provide local funding for local priorities and contributions for partnership funding the Regional Flood and Coastal Committees recommend through the Environment Agency a local levy.
A change in the gross budgeted expenditure between years reflects the programme of works for both capital and revenue needed by the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee to which you contribute. The total Local Levy raised by this committee has increased by 2.0%.
The total Local Levy raised has increased from £2,268,110 in 2023/2024 to £2,313,472 for 2024/2025.
The city council’s contribution to the levy is £95,677.
Statement concerning adult social care funding
We are required by regulations to include the following statement:
The Secretary of State made an offer to adult social care authorities. (“Adult social care authorities” are local authorities which have functions under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014, namely county councils in England, district councils for an area in England for which there is no county council, London borough councils, the Common Council of the City of London and the Council of the Isles of Scilly.)
The offer was the option of an adult social care authority being able to charge an additional “precept” on its council tax without holding a referendum, to assist the authority in meeting its expenditure on adult social care from the financial year 2016-17. It was originally made in respect of the financial years up to and including 2019-20. If the Secretary of State chooses to renew this offer in respect of a particular financial year, this is subject to the approval of the House of Commons.