In the financial year from April 2025 until March 2026, the council expects to be spending around £287.7m on services across Central Bedfordshire, such as refuse collection and recycling, leisure, libraries, parks, planning, parking, licensing, trading standards, public health, and social care services. This is known as the revenue budget and is mainly funded through Council Tax and business rates.
You can see how the council plans to spend your Council Tax for 2025/26 below.
Over half (60 per cent) of the council’s revenue budget is spent on services for children or care services for those who are elderly, disabled or vulnerable.
Breakdown of the figures from the graphic above
Here’s the budget breakdown for Central Bedfordshire Council’s planned spending of £287.7m on services in 2025/26:
- Adult social services: £105.4m (36.6%)
- Children’s services (including educational transport): £68.9m (24%)
- Capital financing (costs associated with building schools, roads, leisure centres): £28.6m (9.9%)
- Council support services (e.g., finance, IT, building management, customer services, elections, and registration services): £27.2m (9.4%)
- Waste and recycling: £23.3m (8.1%)
- Transport, roads, and parking (excluding educational transport): £9.4m (3.3%)
- Economic growth and planning: £7.1m (2.5%)
- Contingency: £6.6m (2.3%)
- Public protection and safety (e.g., parking enforcement, trading standards, tackling anti-social behaviour): £4.1m (1.4%)
- Leisure and libraries: £3.9m (1.4%)
- Housing Benefit (plus administration and collection of Business Rates and Council Tax): £3.2m (1.1%)
Housing and publc health
- Housing (funded primarily by rent and service charges): £40.8m (14.2%)
- Public health (funded by government grant): £19.6m (6.8%)