Hendon Town Hall
Barnet Council’s proposed budget for the financial year 2026-27 was approved last night (5 March) at a meeting of Full Council. With the help of Exceptional Financial Support (EFS), it sets a balanced budget, as legally required, in the face of escalating demand for council services.
It also sets the stage for longer term financial resilience by boosting efforts to transform council services through greater use of data, technology and AI.
The forthcoming year’s budget includes a general Council Tax increase of 2.98% plus an Adult Social Care precept increase of 2%. This means that for four years running the council has kept Council Tax below the maximum. Excluding the Council Tax collected on behalf of the GLA, this means a Band D property rate of £1,622.09, which is about £450 below the notional average.
The budget has been set at a period of continuing financial challenges. The council is facing spiralling costs of temporary accommodation due to London’s housing crisis, while at the same time dealing with ever-growing demand for increasingly complex needs in adult and children’s social care.
Through careful management the council has stayed within budget in this current year (2025/26), but despite delivering £74m of savings over the past three years, and finding a further £9.4m savings for next year, rising demand for these complex, expensive services – which the council has a legal duty to provide – has resulted in a budget gap of £79.3m for 2026/27.
Last month, the government confirmed that the council’s application for ‘exceptional financial support’ of £79.6m to plug this gap through borrowing or asset sales, had been ‘approved in principle’. Barnet is one of nine London councils to have its EFS application approved this year. This means more than a quarter of London boroughs are now receiving additional support from the Government to meet rising demand in services.
Cllr Barry Rawlings, Leader of Barnet Council, said: “We recognise that residents are still living with significant cost-of-living pressures, so we have kept Council Tax below the maximum once again, as we have for the last three years. Barnet continues to have the lowest Council Tax of all its neighbouring boroughs.
“Demand for costly services continues to rise, so to help address the structural challenges we face, we have developed a wide-ranging innovation approach that will use AI and other digital technologies to better forecast and prevent demand, as well as automate services to make them ever more efficient and cost-effective.
“EFS is a temporary solution, so we must make further progress towards financial sustainability. Our objective is to have a balanced budget that is not reliant on EFS, within three years. This is an ambitious and challenging timescale, but we are determined to do everything we can to achieve it, while delivering the quality services our communities deserve.
“Key to this is helping Barnet’s residents to thrive and live healthy, independent lives, so fewer people need to rely on high-cost services. This will address our financial issues and help us support the changing needs of Barnet’s growing population in the long term. While we face financial challenges now, with our positive multi-year funding settlement from central government, and inflation and interest rates starting to come down, there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
For information on Council Tax visit: www.barnet.gov.uk/council-tax