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Hertfordshire County Council

Budget survey 2026-27

 

 

 

Have your say on budget spending (2026-27)

Tell us which services you would prioritise spending money on. Also, share your ideas for making further savings and increasing income.

The budget survey 26-27 closed on Sunday 7 December 2025 at 11.45pm

Thank you for taking part.

 

 

 

Budget Survey report

The survey is now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond - we greatly value your input. A summary of the feedback received as part of this year’s budget consultation is set out in the report below.

Budget survey report 2026-27 (PDF 680KB)

Next Steps

15 Jan - 10 Feb 2026 – Draft budget considered by county councillors.

You can find the full budget proposal and survey report here: Agenda for Cabinet on Wednesday, 14 January 2026, 10.00 am | Hertfordshire County Council

17 Feb 2026 – Budget goes to County Council for approval: Agenda for County Council on Tuesday, 17 February 2026, 10.00 am | Hertfordshire County Council

 

This year, the budget survey was opened between 3rd November and 7th December 2025. Like all councils, Hertfordshire County Council needs to agree a balanced budget every year. This means the amount we spend on services can’t be more than the money we have available.

We spend more than £1.2 billion providing services that our 1.2 million residents value and rely on from their earliest years to the later stages of life including social services for children and adults, roads and libraries.

Most of our budget is spent on services we are required to deliver by law, with 68% of the total on social care services for adults and children alone. These services continue to become more expensive because of increasing need and costs.

We continue to innovate to ensure we're working as efficiently as possible to reduce costs and make every penny count. This year we’re working to save £42 million on top of the £46 million saved over the previous 12 months. Since 2010, a total of £495 million savings have been achieved. However, we still expect to face difficult choices to balance our budget even if we were to increase Council Tax by 4.99% as we’ve had to do in previous years.

This is driven by the government’s plans to change the way councils across the country are funded. This could reduce the amount of grant funding we receive from central government by around £50 million a year by 2027-28. Before the government’s proposals were announced, we were forecasting a surplus in our budget by this date.

We're determined to set a budget for the next year which is both affordable and delivers the priorities set out in our new corporate plan. Our services touch the lives of every Hertfordshire resident, business and community so your feedback is vital.

 

For every £100 we spend, this is how it's split:

 

 

 

Summary highlights:

 

Adult Care Services

  • We provide essential care and support to over 30,000 adults every year.
  • We have assisted over 18,000 residents to leave hospital.

 

Children’s Services

  • We provide education to over 200,000 children and young people and are currently supporting 12,500 children with education, health and care plans.
  • Nearly 1,000 children and young people are in our care at any one time, and we've also developed pioneering safeguarding models to return many of them safely to their families.

 

A firefighter

Community Protection

  • Our fire and rescue service responds to 11, 000 emergency calls a year.
  • Our resilience team prepares us to respond to major incidents.
  • Our Trading Standards team supports our business community and deals with around 6,000 complaints about dodgy dealers, counterfeit products and scams annually.

 

A libarian

Community services

  • Visitors to our libraries borrow over six million items each year.
  • We register 3,500 civil marriages and partnerships and almost 18,000 births and deaths each year.

 

Person on a bike

Environmental services

  • We fund the treatment and disposal of 500,000 tonnes of waste each year, and more than half of the county's household waste is recycled.
  • We maintain over 2,000 miles of footpaths, bridleways and byways, and improve over 100 green spaces, nature reserves, rivers and woodlands each year.
  • We're also helping to plant and establish 1.8 million trees and working to make our operations carbon neutral by 2030.

 

Highways engineer putting out cones

Highways

  • We look after 3.200 miles of roads, carrying out more than 1,000 maintenance and improvement schemes annually.
  • Last year we resurfaced one million square miles of roads to help prevent potholes forming.
  • We are also constructing and improving active travel routes to help residents walk, cycle or wheel safely.

 

 

Older lady exercising with a resistance band

Public Health

  • Our services help people to make healthy choices and lifestyle changes, reducing their risk of long-term illness and helping them to live a long life well.
  • We check the weight and development of every child born in the county and provide services that help residents to quit smoking and access support for alcohol and substance misuse

 

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