Norfolk budget proposals 2019/20

Overview

Norfolk County Council helps make the county better for everyone who lives or works here or travels to Norfolk. The many services we run include ensuring children and young people have the best start in life, providing the fire and rescue service, protecting vulnerable people, maintaining a safe road system and helping improve the economy. We spend over a billion pounds every year providing public services.

The use of our services, particularly by those becoming older, is growing every year. Demand is rising but the amount of money we receive from central government is declining; we now receive £204 million less each year, compared to 2011/12, and this is also expected to fall to zero by 2020/21.  

We have developed a financial strategy to overcome these challenges through these principles:

• Offering our help early to prevent and reduce demand for specialist services
• Joining up our work so that similar activities and services are easily accessible, done well and done once
• Being business-like and making the best use of digital technology to ensure value for money
• Using evidence and data to target our work where it can make the most difference.

Since 2011/12 we have saved the best part of £364 million, including £246 million of efficiency savings. We are proposing to save £79 million, including new saving proposals for 2019/20 to 2021/22, over the next three years and we are also identifying ways of bridging a remaining gap of £45.98 million.

Even though we are proposing to increase council tax next year, by the minimum required to put our finances on a sound footing, the amount of money we hope to raise wouldn’t be enough to balance our budget. 

This means we must continue to make some difficult decisions about how we spend your money.

We have therefore been looking at how we can save money on services.

Why your views matter

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about our proposals.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the links:

- Your views on our proposal to change our Adult Social Care charging policy

- Your view on our proposals that would see service changes and a reduction in searchroom hours at Norfolk Record Office

- Your views on our proposal to increase council tax by 2.99% in 2019/20

What happens next

We will report the findings to this consultation to our service committees in January. Our reports will include feedback about what people have told us about the potential impact of our proposals. 

Members will use this as part of the evidence they take into account when making a decision about what savings to make at Full Council in February.

Find out more about the proposals and read the consulation feedback by clicking on the links below: