Issue date: 23 February 2026
As a county council we deliver over 300 services to more than 915,000 residents across 769 square miles. Every day our residents reply on the services we provide to keep them safe and supported and allow the communities they live in to prosper and thrive.
Setting a budget to provide such a breadth of services is a challenging and complicated task. This year made even more challenging after the government reduced our funding by £30m over the next 3 years and redistributed the funds elsewhere in the country under its ‘Fairer Funding’ plans.
But we have not only set out a balanced budget for the year ahead without cuts to frontline services or dipping into reserves, we have also agreed capital investments of £142.3m, including:
· £56.5m to maintain and improve our roads and provide transport
· £39.3m managing schools and education, children’s social care and support – including adaptions in schools to increase the number of specialist places
· £6m for recycling and waste disposal, and to protect the environment - mainly focused on investment into renewable energy and processing food waste
Alongside these investments we will also spend £2.3 billion on day-to-day services. More than half of this money (58%) will be spent on schools and education, children’s social care and support and 25% on caring for adults and keeping people healthy.
We have increased our net revenue budget by £34.7m to meet increasing demand pressures and costs, particularly in social care, home to school transport, and special educational needs and disabilities.
It’s therefore more essential than ever that our limited resources are carefully aligned with the priorities in Our Council Plan to ensure we provide effective services which offer maximum value for our residents.
I believe we have done this and have presented an extremely positive budget against a very difficult background of increasing pressures and rising costs.
To support the delivery of Our Council Plan we have launched several new transformation programmes to further improve how the council operates, make services more efficient, and more responsive to the needs of residents. This work builds on past successes and existing strengths seen in the recent positive inspections of our adults, children’s and Fire & Rescue services.
To balance the budget, savings of £30.4m were identified for the year ahead alongside the introduction of a 4.99% increase in council tax - comprising 2% for Adults’ Social Care and 2.99% for General Fund services.
Increasing council tax is never something we want to do but the financial situation we find ourselves in really does leave us little choice.
This means the county council element of the average Band D council tax bill will increase to £1,890.36, an increase of £89.82 per year or £1.73 per week.
I know this increase will be a worry for some people and support and advice are available via our cost of living webpages.
Whilst we have managed to find solutions to the financial challenges we face this year, the future is still a concern. There remains a budget gap of £72.5m up to 2030-31 and it could be more if we choose not to increase council tax in the coming years.
Local government reorganisation is expected to come into effect in April 2028 and will see efficiency savings through the local consolidation of services. But we will need to continue to carefully manage our budgets until new local government structures are in place.
We will also continue to lobby with partners to ensure the government understands the needs of West Sussex residents, businesses, and communities.
You can read more about the budget setting process at www.westsussex.gov.uk/budget.
