Consultation on Hampshire County Council's Budget for 2027-2028
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Each year, Hampshire County Council sets a budget that determines how much money can be spent on local services. By law, we must balance our budget, which means we cannot spend more than the funding we have available.
Like many councils, we are facing rising costs and increasing demand for services, particularly for supporting vulnerable children and adults and school transport. This means we expect a funding gap of £198.9 million in 2027/28. A funding gap is the difference between the cost of providing services and the money available to pay for them.
We have limited options for addressing this gap. These are summarised below and explained in more detail within the consultation information pack, which we encourage you to read before responding. It is likely that we would need to use a combination of these options.
As we plan our budget, we want to understand your views and any potential impact our decisions could have on residents, communities, businesses and organisations across Hampshire.
We are also open to other ideas. If you have suggestions for how we could reduce costs, increase income, manage demand for services, or help address the funding gap, we would welcome them as part of this consultation.
How to share your views
The consultation is open from 2 November to 11:59pm on 13 December 2026.
Please ensure that you respond within this period as responses received after the closing date will not be included in the consultation report.
You can share your views by:
- using the online consultation response form
- emailing [email protected] using the subject ‘Budget Consultation’
- writing to Freepost HAMPSHIRE. Please write Budget Consultation, B026R on the back of the envelope. You do not need to use a stamp.
Our financial strategy
Hampshire County Council has a strong track record of managing its finances well and delivering high-quality services.
By 31 March 2027, we will have reduced our annual spending by £767 million over 18 years while continuing to provide services rated as good or outstanding.
We have achieved this by:
- planning ahead to identify savings early and reduce the impact of service changes.
- investing in new and more efficient ways of working.
- keeping tight controls on spending, including senior manager approval for purchases over £500.
- generating additional income to help fund services.
- focusing resources on those with the greatest need, including vulnerable children and adults.
- exploring all other options before reducing or stopping services.
- learning from savings and efficiencies achieved by other councils.
- using reserves carefully to manage funding pressures and rising demand.
Despite these measures, we still expect a budget shortfall of around £198.9 million in 2027/28. This would be the largest funding gap the County Council has ever faced.
This is due to a number of ongoing, new and developing challenges, including the following.
- Demand for many of our services continues to grow rapidly and is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
- Higher inflation and wider economic pressures have increased the cost of contracts, energy and supplies.
- We have used reserves (similar to personal savings) to help balance our budget since 2022/23, but these funds are running out.
- Government funding has not kept pace with rising demand and costs.
- Although the Government has recognised the need for reform and additional funding, Hampshire received no funding from the Recovery Grant and is expected to lose £42.9 million each year through changes to local government funding.
- The amount of Council Tax councils are currently allowed to raise is not enough on its own to keep up with rising costs and demand. We asked Government for permission to increase Council Tax by an additional 5% in 2026/27, but this request was declined.
You can read more about our financial strategy and the challenges we face on pages 12 to 16 of the consultation information pack.
Options to address the budget gap
Delivering efficiencies
Some savings can be made without reducing services by improving how we work. We have been finding efficiencies for many years and identified £5.5 million of annual efficiency savings in 2026/27
You can read more about this on page 18 of the consultation information pack.
We would like to hear your ideas for other ways we could improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Lobbying central government for additional funding and legislative change
The County Council's finances are heavily influenced by Government funding and legislation. In some areas, current rules limit our ability to introduce measures that could help support local services.
We can lobby the Government to:
- increase funding for local government.
- change the way councils are funded.
- give councils greater freedom to make local decisions that could help balance budgets.
However, lobbying takes time, and there is no guarantee that it would be successful or be of help within this budget cycle.
Examples are provided on page 19 of the consultation information pack.
Generating extra income
We are allowed to generate some income to help fund services and overhead costs, for example by providing services to schools, renting out unused buildings, investing cash balances, and selling land or buildings that are no longer needed.
While this income helps reduce the budget gap, it would not be enough to close it on its own.
More details of this can be seen on page 21 of the consultation information pack.
Introducing and increasing charges for some services
Some services could be partly funded through charges paid by the people who use them.
Options could include:
- increasing entry or parking charges at countryside sites.
- introducing new on-street parking charges.
- increasing fees for arranging care and managing payments for people who pay for their own care.
- increasing fees for ceremonies such as weddings, civil partnerships and naming ceremonies.
If changes to legislation were approved, we could also consider charges for services that councils are currently not allowed to charge for, such as visits to Household Waste Recycling Centres or issuing bus passes.
More examples are provided on page 22 of the consultation information pack.
Review service delivery models
We regularly review services to ensure they provide good value for money and high-quality outcomes.
We could continue to review our in-house services and consider whether alternative models of delivery would be more cost effective. This could include:
- assessing whether services should continue to be delivered in-house.
- considering alternative providers where this could be more cost effective.
- using technology in new and innovative ways to improve services and reduce costs.
Recent examples of how we have done this can be seen on page 23 of the consultation information pack.
Reducing and stopping services
Some council services are required by law, while others are discretionary. Even where services are required by law, there may be flexibility in how they are delivered.
Examples of how we have done this in the past are available on page 24 of the consultation information pack.
Reducing or stopping services could help save money. However:
- the savings that could be made are now much smaller than in previous years.
- service reductions alone would not close the budget gap.
- changes could have a significant impact on residents.
For these reasons, we would always look at other options first where possible.
If changes to specific services are proposed, separate public consultations giving further detail would take place before any decisions are made. We would continue to meet our statutory duties.
Delaying spend
To help manage current financial pressures, we could delay some spending that would normally help us avoid higher costs in the future, as explained on page 26 of the consultation information pack.
For example, we could delay spending on things such as building maintenance, staff training, and replacing IT equipment.
This could help reduce immediate budget pressures, but may lead to service disruption, skills shortages and increased costs in the longer term.
Increasing Council Tax
Council Tax provides around 76% of the County Council's net budget, and Hampshire residents currently pay less Council Tax than residents in most other county areas.
Each 1% increase in Council Tax would generate around £9.4 million.
We can increase Council Tax by up to 4.99% in 2027/28 without Government approval or a referendum. Our financial forecasts already assume a 4.99% increase, which would generate around £46.4 million.
This would help address the budget gap but would not close it on its own.
Alternatively, the County Council could:
- increase Council Tax by less than 4.99%, which would increase financial pressures.
- seek Government approval or hold a referendum to increase Council Tax by more than 4.99%.
A higher increase would provide additional income, putting us on a more stable financial footing going forwards and could reduce the need for service reductions or new charges. However, it would also increase costs for households.
Further details are provided on page 27 of the consultation information pack, and the consultation response form shows what different increases would mean for your household.
Using the County Council's reserves or borrowing
Over the years we have set aside funding in reserves (similar to the ‘savings’ which an individual would put aside), which have helped us to fund the budget shortfall since 2022/23.
We estimate that we will hold £336.8 million of usable reserves on 31 March 2027.
This includes reserves
- held to mitigate risk (for example, insurance risk)
- committed to other priorities, such as our capital development programme (for example, one-off investment in building and improving schools, libraries, highways, country parks, outdoor centres and other community infrastructure)
- that can be used to replace IT equipment and infrastructure.
We could consider using reserves committed to other priorities (also called ‘committed reserves’) to fund the budget gap, but this would mean stopping planned capital development or increasing borrowing for these programmes.
Reserves can only be used once, and we would be unable to close the 2027/28 budget gap through use of reserves alone – even if committed reserves were used.
More information about this option is available on page 30 of the consultation information pack.
Exceptional Financial Support (EFS)
Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) is a mechanism that the Government can make available to councils facing significant financial pressures.
It can provide short-term flexibility to help balance a budget, including allowing borrowing or use of capital resources (sale proceeds from selling council property or land or capital grants) to fund day-to-day costs. EFS could help the County Council set a balanced budget in 2027/28 and provide time to review, redesign and transform services to reduce long-term costs.
However, it could increase financial pressures in future years because any borrowing would need to be repaid with interest and would mean that the capital resources can only be used once to fund day-to-day spending and couldn’t be used for their original purpose. It also does not address the underlying causes of the County Council's budget gap.
Any request for EFS, and the amount requested, would need to be approved by the Government, and there is no guarantee that approval would be granted.
More information is available on page 32 of the consultation information pack.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking the time to read about these options.
If you would like more detail, please read the consultation information pack or you can use the consultation response form to review this information and share your views.
Consultation documents
Consultation information pack - black and white printable version
Consultation information pack and response form - Easy Read format
Consultation response form - for printing
Privacy notice
Hampshire County Council is seeking your views, comments and information about you as part of consultation on the County Council’s financial strategy for 2027/28. The legal basis for the use of your information is UK GDPR Article 6 1 e ‘performance of a task carried out in the public interest in the exercise of official authority vested in the Council'. Responses will inform the Council’s decisions on how to set its budget for 2027/28.
The information you provide in your consultation response is being collected and processed by Hampshire County Council. Raw data will only be shared with other parties where they are undertaking data processing on behalf of Hampshire County Council. All data will remain within the UK/EEA. Your responses will be kept securely for two years, after which they will be deleted or destroyed.
You have some legal rights in respect of the personal information we collect from you. Please see our 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.