Sandwell Budget Consultation 2025

Overview

We want to hear your views about the services that are most important to you, and where we should prioritise spending. Here is an explanation of the situation:

The Council spends around £366m each year on day-to-day services, such as refuse collections, recycling, street cleansing, providing libraries and leisure centres and adult and children’s social care services. We must meet all our legal requirements but can make choices in how we deliver some of these services.

Using our residents’ survey and listening to residents we also know that people want to see us invest in things which matter – such as preventing anti-social behaviour, having some of the best roads in the country, and having green spaces which improve quality of life.

The Council’s capital programme will see investment in town centres, more affordable housing and delivering on our masterplans to bring new life to the six towns. We also want to keep your council tax as one of the lowest in the region. The decisions we make when setting the budget will show that we are a caring council that gets things done.

Whilst wanting to make these investments, we are also facing similar pressures to residents and other councils from inflation and rising costs. The cost-of-living crisis is also creating more demand for some council services. This means that difficult decisions need to be made when the Council sets its budget.

Your answers to these questions will help to shape our budget proposals for the future.

All information will be processed in accordance with UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018. Personal information will be held solely for the purposes of the consultation and to analyse the responses. The information will be held for a period of 6 months.

For further information, please refer to the council’s privacy notice: www.sandwell.gov.uk/privacynotice