Budget FAQs
- A council that puts residents first
- A borough that is clean and safe; and
- A place where those in need are supported
- one of the fastest growing aging populations in London
- high levels of children with special educational needs – who may need additional support to live independently as they become adults; and
- soaring levels of homelessness which has pushed the bill for temporary accommodation this year up by 33% to around £12m.
- Earmarked reserves – these are already committed to be spent on specific schemes or projects, like building new schools.
- General reserves – these are for responding to unexpected events and it is prudent to keep a certain amount of funding for these eventualities.
- Review of Fees and Charges (£345k)
- Additional income from Registration Services and Legal Services (£200k)
- Additional rent income from property portfolio (£247k)
- Making our libraries more cost effective by reducing overheads while continuing to deliver services (£47k)
- Energy savings from more efficient street lighting solutions (£400k)
- Income and expenditure budget realignments within Culture, Environment and Economy directorate (£559k)
- Directorates recommissioning efficiencies (£1.278m)
- There is also £2.028m net savings highlighted during last year’s budget saving rounds which will come into effect in 2025/26. More details are in Appendix 1B.
- Council Tax Support changes (£1.3m)
- Empty property premiums (£0.75m)
- £868,000 to expand our street cleansing and grounds maintenance team to deliver cleaner streets.
- More than doubling our annual capital investment on roads and pavements, from £6m to £14m (a total of £36m over the next three years).
- Targeting anti-social behaviour in hotspot areas in our community with more days and nights of action and working in partnership with the Police – by investing £160,000 in our Community Safety Team
- Improving the customer experience by investing £250,000 to create new and better ways to contact us through digital kiosks at our libraries, an improved and extended customer service offer at our offices in Gayton Road; and a dedicated contact team to support phone enquiries.
- Investing more than £6m over the next 3 years in our Parks – delivering better facilities and more green flag parks.
- Continuing one-hour free parking in all council owned car parks and on street bays – helping boost spending on our high streets and putting money back into your pocket.
- Freezing our Garden Waste service at the 2024/25 price.
Why are you running this consultation?
This consultation presents London Borough of Harrow’s draft budget for 2025/26.
We legally must share with you our plans and ask you what you think of them ahead of setting a balanced budget in February. But regardless of our statutory responsibility, we want to know what you think.
We have to run a consultation at this time of year to ensure that your responses feed into the budget-setting processes, and we have to wait for information from Government about how much they are giving us first.
We don't receive that information until just before Christmas.
What are your priorities?
Every year, the London Borough of Harrow delivers services to more than 263,000 people. Some are essential and some are what we consider important to help us restore pride in Harrow and deliver our key priorities:
We must now look at how we are going to pay for all these services next year – and future years.
The 2025/26 budget has been developed to ensure funds are available and resources are committed to deliver these priorities.
Why are you proposing to raise Council Tax?
We are heavily reliant on Council Tax to fund our core budget.
While we receive Government funding to help us deliver services – they tell us how we must use this money for example on schools, public health and housing benefits.
This year, almost 80% of our day-to-day revenue budget is funded by you from Council Tax – that’s £162m out of £203m to be exact.
We do not receive specific funding to meet any growth or changes in population – so if there’s more children or vulnerable adults needing our support, we don’t get any more money.
This year (2024/25), we increased Council tax by 4.99% giving us an extra £8.2m to spend on services.
But rising prices caused by high inflation has made it more expensive to deliver council services.
At the same time demand for services the council provides has increased. We have:
Can't you use money in reserves instead of putting Council Tax up?
Reserves are money that has been put aside to pay for something in the future or help out in times of emergencies. This money is a little like the councils savings account. The council must be very careful with how it uses this money as once it’s gone, it’s gone.
There are two types of council reserves:
Harrow remains one of the lowest funded Councils both within London and nationally and does not benefit from large reserves compared with some other boroughs in London.
Whilst reserves can be used to fund a shortfall on a short-term basis, they cannot be used to fund continuing spend (e.g., Adults Services) as they are one-off amounts of funding. Once they are spent, the council would be exposed to the risk that if some serious unexpected expenditure is necessary, there won’t be any money available for it.
How much additional money did the Council get from Council Tax for all the new homes built?
There have been around 152 new properties added to the tax base for 2024-25, which brings in around £275,000 in council tax.
While new homes gives the council a little more money, it also means the council must spend more on delivering services to these homes and people. This puts additional pressure on the council's budget.
What savings are you proposing?
There are savings of £3.076m put forward for next year (2025/26). These are in Appendix 1A but are summarised as:
What other savings are you proposing?
A further £2.050m in savings is proposed for 2025/26. These savings come from the Council Tax base and so have been calculated separately. These are in the Draft Budget 2025-26 and MTFS Report but can be summarised as:
What improvements to services are you proposing?
We recognise that as well as making savings we also need to continue to improve our frontline services that put residents first, deliver a clean and safe borough and support those in need. This budget proposes we do that by:
Harrow has one of the fastest growing ageing populations compared to the rest of London and a growing number of adults with complex needs. Because of this we plan to take the government’s 2% increase to Council Tax for use on adult social care - this will give us an extra £2m to support those most in need. We will boost this with an extra £3m of our budget to support adult social care in 2025/26.
What does Adult Social Care cover?
Adult social care is the support provided to adults with either physical or learning disabilities, or physical or mental illnesses.
The support provided could be for personal care such as eating, cleaning and getting dressed or for domestic routines such as going to the shops. Adult social care can be provided through care services, including care homes or a carer helping in someone's home.
These services are usually paid for privately by the person receiving the care, or by the local council.
What does Children's Services Cover?
Children's services manage the health, care and education of children and young people in the borough, and providing it is a statutory duty of the council.
The two main roles are to support children and families and protect vulnerable children.
What does temporary accommodation cover?
Temporary accommodation is temporary housing for residents who are experiencing homelessness while the council helps them to find a more permanent solution.
Each year we are seeing more and more people approaching the council to ask for help with housing due to homelessness. In the last 12 months we have received 4139 homeless approaches and 1586 homeless applications.
Harrow has a limited supply of council and housing association homes, with a long list of people waiting for a home. The social housing stock is insufficient to meet the need locally so different types of temporary accommodation are used, the most common being private sector leases, local authority or housing association properties, nightly purchased accommodation, and bed and breakfast.
The spend on temporary accommodation is increasing, as of October 2024, there are 1335 households in temporary accommodation.
How much is spent on concessionary travel?
One of the biggest spending areas in our budget in 2024/25 is concessionary travel. This year the council is spending £7.7m on this service, which includes Freedom Passes, disability permits and Taxi Cards.
What is the ‘fees and charges’ part of the Budget Consultation?
Residents, and businesses are invited to share their feedback on the proposed fees and charges as part of the wider budget consultation for 2025/26.
The fees and charges include discretionary services provided by the Council ranging from highways to commercial waste and planning services, amongst other chargeable services.
We propose to increase some fees and charges for these important but non-essential services to help to address an unprecedented rise in running costs and service demand for the year ahead.
We have frozen some charges at the 2024/25 level such as the Garden Waste service and retained the 1-hour free parking on street in Harrow and in most car parks managed by the Council.
You can see the list of fees and charges in Appendices 2 to 6 categorised by each directorate and service area with proposed changes for 2025/26.
The majority of the charges are being increased by 4.5% (rounded up or down as appropriate). This takes account of the RPI in September 2024 of 2.7% and provides about 2% towards full cost recovery of the service.
We have looked to benchmark fees and charges against other local authorities to ensure we are providing services at a fair cost.
What if I need help with my finances?
Harrow’s Household Support Fund (HSF) is supporting pensioners who have lost their winter fuel payments and providing vouchers to families that receive free school meals to help with the cost of food outside of term time.
The HSF is also supporting care leavers moving into independent accommodation, clearing rent arrears of people seeking debt support and assisting local advice services, including those offered at Harrow’s popular Conversation Cafe.
Find out the eligibility criteria and how to apply for the HSF
Our website also contains useful information about the Cost of Living and how to check to make sure you are receiving all the benefits and support you are entitled to. Find out more via our Cost of Living pages.
What happens next?
The information we gather will be used to inform our final budget which will be reported to Council on 27 February 2025.
We will publish the outcome of the consultation and the final Budget Report on this page in February 2025.
Any comments provided will be treated as confidential and will be anonymised before publication.
How do I get involved?
Let us know your views by filling out our Draft Budget Survey <insert link>