Budget Council, March 2025
Budget plans for 2025-26 have been agreed by Wirral councillors at a meeting of the full council on March 3 at Wallasey Town Hall.
At the meeting the Leader of Wirral Council, Cllr Paul Stuart, said the decision being made on the budget “will shape our borough's financial future and determine how we continue delivering essential services to those who rely on them”.
He told councillors:
Like councils across the country, we face an extremely challenging financial landscape. Rising demand for adult and children's social care, inflationary pressures, and increasing costs continue to strain local government budgets significantly.
However, despite these difficulties, we are making progress. Through responsible leadership across all committees, working together, and financial discipline, this Council has worked hard to stabilise our finances, protect frontline services, and invest in the long-term future of Wirral.
Cllr Stuart outlined some of the council’s achievements in the last year, from the development of 11 Family Hubs supporting families, better local care for looked-after children, maintaining the real living wage for over 8,000 care workers, more extra-care housing, work starting at the Hind Street Urban Village and securing £11 million for Liscard town centre improvements, Wirral Country Park was named Keep Britain Tidy's ‘Team of the Year’, Environmental Action Days in key locations across the borough.
Cllr Stuart said:
These are just a few of the many achievements that are testament to our council staff's dedication and hard work. They prioritise the needs of our residents and showcase the significant impact of our efforts—not just on budgets but on the lives of the people we serve.
Difficult decisions are necessary, but they must be made responsibly, collaboratively, and with Wirral's best interests at heart.
Urging councillors to support the budget he added:
Let's continue building on our progress—together.
The full speech by the Council Leader can be viewed on the webcast of the meeting.
The budget sets the Wirral Council Tax bill to increase by 2.99% plus an additional 2% ringfenced to help fund Adult Social Care.
The final council tax also sees contributions to Merseyside Police, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Merseyside Fire and Rescue added, with bills for 2025-26 being sent to households later this month.
At the meeting councillors were also advised that an application for Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) has been approved by the Government.
Like many other councils across the country Wirral Council has faced severe financial challenges in recent years and in 2024-25 it became clear that a balanced position was not achievable without assistance from the Government.
This was despite measures to restrain spending and make cost savings being put in place early in the financial year when forecasts indicated a significant overspend was likely.
The assistance from MHCLG helped in balancing the 2024-25 budget, with additional support for 2025/26 to ensure the Council has sufficient resources to fund the proposed one-off transformational costs required to deliver budget savings now agreed by councillors, and to help manage the ongoing increasing demand for social care costs.
As part of the preparation of the budget for 2025-26 all Council departments had been told to seek significant savings with numerous options then considered by Elected Members on the Council’s committees in the run-up to the Budget Council, to identify ways to manage the financial challenges facing the authority.
To meet the challenge of ensuring the Council can operate within its means for 2025-26 and beyond, while ensuring it is able to continue protecting the most vulnerable in our communities, the budget for the coming year identifies total savings and efficiencies of £25.446m.
This includes delivering previously identified savings of £9.779m; council business efficiencies of £4.680m by using more effective ways to provide services; and bringing in an additional £0.502m by raising fees and charges where possible.
The authority will also be changing how it funds and provides services to save £8.532m by reducing costs and becoming more efficient, as well as reducing or stopping some services which will see savings of £1.953m.
Further announcements about the implementation of the agreed budget options will be made in the coming months.
A full list of the savings options agreed to set a balanced budget for 2025/26 is in Appendix 1 of the 2025/26 Budget and Medium-term Financial Strategy, item 4b on the council agenda for March 3.
