Budget
Our spending plans for 2023-2024 were approved on Wednesday 22 February 2023.
These plans include the revenue budget (our running costs) and the capital programme (which funds land, buildings and roads). The plans for managing and maintaining tenants’ homes are approved separately.
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 revenue 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 during which we set stop gap budgets whilst we dealt with the immediate emergency and had to postpone looking for savings;
- the recent spike in inflation, which increased costs for employees’ pay and for energy;
- increasing costs of social care, particularly as more people grow older and need support;
- a new round of austerity which the Government announced, that will lead to more cuts to our funding in years to come.
We were able to set the budget for 2023-2024 after making savings and by using our reserves. We will need to make more savings to balance future budgets, which will be painful.
The capital programme includes funding for major investments in the city and for work of lasting benefit. Most of the money we spend comes from government grants and the proceeds of selling land and buildings.
Our revenue budget and capital programme for 2023-2024 can be downloaded below. If you have any problems accessing either of these documents, please email themayor@leicester.gov.uk.