Hampshire County Council Future Services Consultation – Spring 2025

Open until

Following approval of Hampshire County Council’s budget for 2025/26, residents and stakeholders are invited to share their views on a range of proposed service changes that could help to contribute towards addressing a remaining predicted shortfall of £97.6 million in the County Council’s budget for 2025/26.

Context for consultation

Hampshire County Council ('the County Council') delivers most of Hampshire’s public services, to 1.4 million residents, and we are responsible for around 80% of all spending on council services in the county.

In recent years, the County Council has experienced increasing costs and demand for services like social care, school transport, and support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

More recently, Government decisions, such as increased National Insurance costs, have also added to our budget pressures, which have reached a record high. All of this means that we have less money to spend on other services, despite:

  • making significant savings in recent years by streamlining our organisational structure, including a reduction in Director and Assistant Director posts. This has made us one of the leanest county council Senior Officer groups in the country
  • changing the way we work by streamlining back-office functions, embracing digital opportunities, only spending on essential items and becoming more efficient, innovative and commercial in our approach to delivering services
  • reducing the level of service we provide in some areas (most recently Cabinet agreed a number of service changes in November 2024 following the public Future Services Consultation)
  • looking for ways to raise income, such as disposing of land and buildings we no longer need
  • raising Council Tax in line with central Government policy
  • using our financial reserves to help address budget shortfalls (these are now insufficient to keep plugging gaps in future)
  • asking central Government for financial help, for the ability to raise Council Tax by a maximum of 15%, as well as for changes to the law and funding for local government. (Central Government have recently rejected our request to raise Council Tax by a maximum of 15%.)

Even with all the changes highlighted above, our forecasts predict that by 2025/26 the County Council would still have a recurring budget gap of £182 million. After implementing Phase One of our savings programme and following announcements in the local government finance settlement, this has been reduced to a £97.6 million budget shortfall for 2025/26.

In this context, we have now had to consider how a focus on only providing all services at the legal minimum level could help us. We have worked with an independent panel of subject matter experts to do this.

Their view is that we are a well performing authority who cannot find enough savings to balance our budget going forwards. However, they strongly urge that we remain in control for as long as possible.

We have also been accepted onto the Government’s Devolution Priority Programme (DPP) and invited to put forward proposals for Local Government Reorganisation across Hampshire by September 2025. However, whilst these programmes have enormous long-term significance, they do not solve our immediate budget challenges. Furthermore, the cost of changes to local government structures must be funded locally so any savings from a streamlined local government system are not likely to arrive until the next decade.

So, for now we need to continue our ongoing focus to identify enough savings to balance our budget. As part of this, we are now proposing some further service changes that we believe could have a significant public impact. We are seeking to understand these impacts in more detail, to consult on potential options and to see if there are other ways in which the savings could be made.

We recognise this period of financial challenge is difficult for residents who are most in need, who may be concerned about the assistance they receive. Our financial situation does not, and will never, impede the services to those of our residents and neighbours most needing of our support. The County Council will continue to meet its core purpose; caring for those residents that need us the most, including working with those with disabilities to help them lead fulfilling lives, protecting children at risk of harm and supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities, although we may deliver these services in a different way.

About the proposals

In February 2025 Hampshire County Council met to consider further spending proposals and budget measures to protect core services. These require further savings of at least £97.6 million during 2025/26 to help meet the expected budget shortfall.

The service change proposals outlined within this consultation would contribute around £9.9 million in total towards closing our budget gap, while ensuring that we continue to meet the statutory duties which we are required by law to carry out.

We are presenting these proposals together to help you understand the range of services affected and consider the combined potential effect on individuals, communities and organisations, should you wish to do so.

As in the last Future Services Consultation (held from January to March 2024) feedback about each service change proposal will be fully considered when final decisions on the proposals are made.

You can read more about each proposal:

As part of this consultation, we have provided more detailed information on each of these proposals to help you understand how they might impact our service. Please do consider this information carefully before sharing your views.

How your views will be used

The County Council is committed to five principles of consultation. We will:

  • consult on key issues and proposals
  • consult in good time
  • be inclusive but with clear and appropriate limits
  • consult using clear, simple information
  • ensure that responses are taken into account when decisions are made

The views submitted through this consultation will be collated and used to understand the potential impact of these service change proposals on local residents, service users and other stakeholders and how they could be adapted in light of these, and any alternative approaches suggested.

Reports will then be presented to the County Council’s Cabinet to be considered as part of their decision meetings during summer 2025. These reports will also be made available on this web page.

Read our Privacy Notice

Hampshire County Council is seeking your views, comments, and information about you in order to understand stakeholders' views on proposed changes to County Council services, the potential impacts of these, and alternative ways to deliver budget savings. This information is being collected for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest in the exercise of official authority vested in the County Council. Responses will be used to support decision making on service change. All data will remain within the UK/EEA and will only be shared with third parties where they are undertaking data processing on behalf of Hampshire County Council. Personal information will be held securely for 2 years after the close of the consultation, after which it will be deleted or destroyed.

You have some legal rights in respect of the personal information we collect from you. Please see our website Data Protection page for further details. You can contact the County Council’s Data Protection Officer at [email protected]. If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you are responding as an organisation, group or business, or as a democratically Elected Representative of a constituency, its name may appear in the final report, and the information you provide may be subject to publication or release to other parties or to disclosure regimes such as the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

How to have your say

This consultation is open from 12 March and closes at 11:59pm on 7 May 2025. Please make sure you respond within this time as responses received after the closing date will not be included in the consultation reports.

There are four services for which we are proposing changes in this consultation. You can share your thoughts on as many or as few as you like. Please read all the information about each change before giving your opinion.

You can give your feedback using the online consultation Response Form. If you don't want to fill it all out at once, you can save it and come back to it later.

If you prefer, you can email your response directly to Hampshire County Council using the email address: [email protected] or write to Freepost HAMPSHIRE. (Please also write PandO, IEU, FM09 on the back of the envelope).

Copies of the Information Packs and a printable version of the consultation Response Form, along with Easy Read versions (an accessible format that provides information using easy words in short sentences, with pictures to help explain the words) of these documents are available to view, enlarge, download and print on this page. 

You can also listen to the documents using a screen reader or a ‘Read Aloud’ function. If you do not have access to the internet, it is available through your local library.

If you need a copy of the Information Pack or the Response Form in another language or format or if you have any queries about the consultation, email [email protected].

If you are able to, please complete the consultation Response Form online as this will save money, both in postage and in staff time in manually entering your response into the consultation.

Give us your views