Welcome to East Ayrshire Council's Budget Consultation 2025/26.

Every year, we ask for your views on how to set our budget to best meet the needs and wants of our communities.

By completing our online survey or attending one of our in person or online consultation events you have an opportunity to make your opinions known and help us shape the future of our services.

On these pages you can also find information about the Council's services, how our funding works, and the pressures and impacts on council budgets. You can find the Budget Strategy 2025/26 report here or under "Important Links", which provides details of the assumptions used to build the budget, and the issues and factors which will impact the budget.

What we do

Scottish councils are responsible for providing many public services, such as:

• schools
• housing
• health and social care
• street lighting
• roads maintenance
• refuse collection
• planning
• building standards
• economic development
• elections

Where our funding comes from

To pay for these services, councils reeceive money from three main sources:

• Scottish Government Revenue Grant: This is the money that the Scottish Government gives to councils every year. The amount of money depends on various factors, such as the population, levels of poverty, and the cost of providing services in each council area. The Council may also receive Government grants which must be used for specific purposes.
• Non-Domestic Rates: These are the taxes paid by businesses and other non-residential properties based on the value of their property. Rates are set by the Scottish Government and councils collect the taxes, which are then pooled together nationally and redistributed across Councils based on the level of need.
• Council Tax: This is the tax that households pay based on the value of their property. Each council sets its own rate of Council Tax every year. The money raised from Council Tax stays with the council that collects it and can be used for any general service.

Councils also receive income by charging fees for some services, such as parking, leisure facilities, planning applications, and school meals. The amount of income varies depending on the type and level of service provided by the council.

Councils also have reserves to deal with unexpected events or to fund planned one-off costs or manage changes or downsizing, but this money cannot be used to support recurring costs in the same way that using savings to meet regular household bills does not work long term. Using financial reserves cannot solve a budget problem but can allow for short term smoothing of the impact of reductions in budget or meet unexpected costs.

The difference between revenue and capital budgets

The difference between revenue and capital budgets is:

• revenue budgets comprise money that councils spend annually on ongoing public services
• capital budgets are money that councils spend on a one-off basis, for example to create or improve buildings, roads or other assets, mainly funded by borrowing.

For example, if a council wants to build a new school, it would use its capital budget to pay for the construction costs and use its revenue budget to pay for the staff and resources needed to run the school.

Rental income

The council rents out around 12,000 council houses and has a separate housing account. Income received from rent payers can only be spent on services for council tenants, including investment to improve existing homes and to build new ones.

Council priorities

Our Strategic Plan sets out what we want to achieve and how we are going to get there. It is aligned to the Community Plan and is based on a understanding of the things that matter most to our residents and allows us to priorities how we spend our money. The key themes of our plan are:

• building a fairer economy
• tackling poverty and inequality
• improving community wellbeing
• supporting children and young people
• delivering a Clean Green East Ayrshire
• ensuring financial sustainability and resilience

The pressures currently facing the Council’s budget

At the moment the council's budget faces many pressures including:

• demographic change in East Ayrshire, with an aging population and declining birth rate, requiring a significant reallocation of public sector resources
• impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has increased the demand for some services, such as health and social care, public health, and education, while reducing the income from other services, such as parking
• rising cost of living and inflation, which have eroded the value of the council’s funding and increased the cost of delivering services - the cost of delivering services is rising faster than our income
• uncertainty over future funding levels and sources, which makes it difficult for the council to plan ahead and invest in long-term projects
• legal and policy obligations which the Council must meet, such as implementing national policies, maintaining statutory services, and paying staff salaries and pensions
• public expectations and preferences which the Council must balance, such as providing high-quality services, protecting vulnerable groups, and keeping taxes low

How these pressures might impact on the Council’s budget

The impact of these pressures on East Ayrshire Council’s budget will depend on how the council decides to deal with them. However, some possible impacts are the Council may have to:

• reduce the quality or quantity of some services, which may affect the well-being and satisfaction of residents
• increase the fees or charges for some services, which may affect the affordability and accessibility of these services for some groups
• raise the Council Tax, which may affect the disposable income and living standards of households
• use our reserves, however, this would affect our financial sustainability and resilience in the long term
• reduce our investment in capital projects, such as new buildings, roads, or equipment, which may affect economic growth and development in the future

It is important for us to consult with our stakeholders and residents to understand your views and priorities and to communicate our decisions and rationale clearly and transparently.

Have your say

By taking part in our consultation, you will help shape the services that matter most to people and communities in the years ahead.

You can have your say on the future of our services by completing the online survey between now and 31 January 2025.

Community conversations

We will also be hosting face to face events where you can make your views known. Arrangements for these events will be circulated and posted on this webpage in due course.

Our community conversations will focus on what matters most to you and whether our priorities are still the right ones. After a short presentation we will hold informal round table discussiosn and you will be offered the chance to put questions to the Council’s Management Team.

What happens next

Your views will help shape our future priorities, ensuring that our resources are used to effectively meet the needs of local communities.

We will analyse the feedback we receive, the results will be reported to the Council and Community Planning Partnership Board before the end of March 2025 and we will publish a summary on this page.