Budget
Have your say on the council’s budget 2010/11 - second stage
Consultation ends: 19 February 2010
It’s your money: how do you think we should spend it?
Like many other organisations, we need to make difficult decisions about our budget for the next financial year (2010/11) and we’d like your views.
What will we spend the money on?
We carry out a wide range of activities, from maintaining parks and pavements, to helping keep children and vulnerable adults safe. Many activities are statutory and we have to do them by law. Others are discretionary. That is, we chose to do them. We have some choice over the level of service we provide in both of these categories.
Why does the budget need to change?
The services that we provide are affected by things that we cannot directly influence. For instance, the number of residents aged over 80 is increasing. Since older residents often need more support from us than younger residents, this change in the population puts pressure on some services that may require savings elsewhere.
Even if were to change nothing about how our services are provided going forward, the cost of providing those same services would still increase because of new pressures like those explained above.
- Budget consultation - expanded overview (PDF: 82KB)
First stage: how have we involved you so far?
During November and December we invited residents to attend Leader Listens and Residents’ Forums to discuss what priorities we should be taking into account in making budget proposals.
We also published a graphic representation (below) of our budget, showing the main areas of expenditure and providing further information about the sources of our budget, and launched an online budget simulator.
Several participants in this first round of consultations commented that not enough detailed information was provided for them to make informed suggestions. This second phase of consultation is intended to respond to that issue by offering significantly greater detail.
Second stage: have your say on the next stage of the consultation
The budget headlines 
(PDF: 400KB) were published at the Cabinet meeting on 12 January. The budget headlines set out the savings we are proposing to make for the financial year 2010/11 to ensure that we can balance the budget.
We are seeking views from our residents and other interested parties (stakeholders), so please complete the online questionnaire. (external link).
The final decision on budgets and Council Tax will be made at the council meeting on 2 March 2010.
Try our budget simulator
This allows you to explore the impact of changes on specific council services.
Below are a series of graphs that illustrate two of the pressures facing the council as we prepare our budget - a comparatively low grant from central government, and already low central administrative costs.
Graphs and Charts
Back office costs per head of population. Barnet Council's back office costs are amongst the lowest in London.
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'Formula Grant' from central Government by head of population. Barnet receives substantially less financial support from central Government than the London average.
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Where you council tax goes. A total of seventy eight percent of your council tax goes to Barnet Council. The remainder is spent on other London-wide services including the Metropolitan police, the London Fire Authority, the Greater London Authority and the 2012 Olympics.
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Where our money comes from. The majority of council funding comes from national taxpayers, much of it through grants directed to specific activities. Locally raised council tax and fees account for only 27 per cent of council spending. A one percent increase in council tax is therefore only a 0.18 per cent increase in the overall budget.
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Available for download is an ‘info-graphic’ that shows how we currently spend our budget.
If you have any comments you would like to make contact us using the details on the left.
Email this pageLast modified by: Mike Godleman on 21/01/2010