Posted on Tuesday 21st January 2025
Good budgeting means the council can invest extra cash in services like the council's 42 libraries.
More than a decade of good decision-making means Staffordshire County Council is able to invest millions of pounds in the community.
Able to deliver a balanced budget, the authority is spending on libraries, country parks and more on early intervention to support struggling families.
The expenditure is on top of highway maintenance and clearing road gullies, attracting new businesses to create jobs, and investing in building new schools and updating older ones.
Ian Parry, Staffordshire County Council’s Cabinet member for Finance and Resources, said:
Supporting our quality of life is just as important as investing in jobs and growth and years of strong financial management mean we are still able to strike the right balance and invest in both for Staffordshire residents.”
Planned investment includes:
- an additional £45 million over three years to fix more roads and clear more gulleys to help prevent flooding;
- £18 million to improve Cannock Chase and Chasewater country parks, and improve the 92-mile Staffordshire Way footpath.
- £5 million to invest in the county’s 42 libraries;
- more than £50 million to build new schools and upgrade others;
- continued investment in the county’s 14 Household Waste Recycling Centres.
Around two-thirds of Staffordshire’s £734 million budget for 2025/26 will be spent on supporting vulnerable children and adults – everything else is funded from the remaining third.
Ian Parry said:
The cost of adult social care falls disproportionately on larger, rural counties such as Staffordshire and requires a Governmental response rather than local taxpayers shouldering an ever-increasing burden.
Everyone agrees that there needs to be a national solution to the rising cost of providing adult social care, but the delivery of that solution always seems to be just around the corner.”
Funding additional support for children with Special Educational Needs (SEND) also remains a major pressure on the council, with Government funding not keeping pace with demand, while the cost of transporting increasing numbers of SEND pupils has already risen from circa £11 million in 2018/19 to £28 million this year.
The authority is proposing a 4.99 per cent increase in council tax – the figure comprising 2.99 per cent for general purposes and 2 per cent ringfenced for social care.
Staffordshire’s council tax is expected to remain one of the lowest for a county authority. For the average home in the county, in Band D, that would mean an additional £1.48 per week.