The council delivers a wide range of services that support our residents every day. As a Unitary Council we have a duty to deliver some services that City and District Council don't, like Adult Social Care and Housing.
Like every Council who has the same duties as us, a significant proportion of our budget is dedicated to supporting vulnerable children, adults and families across our borough.
Year on year we spend most of our money on:
Adult Social Care - this is wide-ranging but includes things like assessing if someone needs care and to what level, providing or arranging services such as reablement that help specific care needs, shaping polices and approaches to help safeguard vulnerable people, and investigated cases that may arise.
Children's Services - we have a duty to provide help for children in need, including undertaking child protection enquires, providing support to parents, care planning, ensuring sufficient school places and ensuring suitable education provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
Housing and homelessness support - we must provide support to anyone threatened with homelessness, provide temporary accommodation when we believe someone is homeless, maintain a housing register and manage a fair allocation system, and support council housing residents who need to leave their home because of fire, flooding or other emergencies.
Waste collection and environmental services - we collect household waste from residents and promote recycling, we take action against illegal dumping of waste, investigate reports of noise, pests and other disturbances, inspect food businesses and maintain our local parks and green spaces.
Highways and transport - we maintain local roads, footpaths, bridges, street lighting, coordinate roadworks and traffic flow with contractors, carry out winter gritting and manage local flood risks.
Public health and community services - we form strategies and campaigns to help improve our residents' health, provide or commission services to tackle local and national health issues, such as stopping smoking, drugs and alcohol, and sexual health, and we work with the Police, Fire, NHS and other partners to reduce crime, anti-social behaviour and exploitation.
This list is just some of the duties we carry out in each area.
Below is how much we had to spend in 2025/26 (needs accuracy check!)
Statutory and Non-Statutory Services
There are some services that we must provide by law. These are known as Statutory Services. The council has around xxxxx statutory duties, this includes some of what is listed above, including education services, children’s safeguarding and social care, adult social care, general and recycled waste collection, planning and housing services, public protection, road maintenance and library services.
We also deliver other services are not required by law. These are called non-statutory or discretionary services and can include: planning enforcement, garden waste collection, theatres and some leisure services.
Although these services are not required by law, they are important and they often support out Statutory duties.
For example, we do not have to carry out parking enforcement by law, but we do have a statutory duty to work toward ensuring the safety of our roads. By carrying out parking enforcement, for instance preventing or fining people who park dangerously, we are helping fulfil our statutory duty.
Other services like our leisure centres, help to improve health outcomes for our residents while also bringing income into the council to help fund local services.
As with every council or business facing increasing costs, having to make choices about which services we reduce or stop is incredibly difficult, but they are decisions we can't avoid.