Alongside its budget for services, the council also has a capital budget. The capital budget is used for building new assets and maintaining physical infrastructure like buildings and roads. The council will continue to invest in building new facilities such as care homes, schools and leisure centres. However, the council will spend less than previous years and the timescales for some of these projects will be longer, so the cost is spread over a longer period.
Although this budget is not funded by Council Tax, it is funded by external grants, borrowing and selling council assets (like council-owned land) and reinvesting this money in facilities, it does have an impact on the council’s service (revenue) budget as the interest paid on borrowing, and a provision to repay the amount borrowed is paid from the service (revenue) budget. The proposed draft capital budget will create costs of approximately £29.7m from our revenue budget.
Next year, the council plans to spend £114m on infrastructure projects. Below is a summary of the plans:
- Over £40m on schools - this includes school maintenance, new school places, transitioning schools to two-tier (£29m) and special educational needs provision (£7m).
- £21m on new leisure centres and other leisure and outdoor activity improvements – this includes the new leisure centre in Leighton Buzzard (£21m) and active travel and green wheel improvements. The council secured government funding for the new leisure centre at Houghton Regis.
- £13.5m on highways works, including resurfacing.
- £10m on new care homes and other facilities for people with a physical or learning disability – this includes the new older people village in Flitwick (Steppingley Road) the council is building.
- £1.5m on flood alleviation works, this includes Pix Brook bridges and flood works (£1m).
You can read the full draft full capital budget as part of the Executive Committee papers on our website.