Budget 2027/28 (Phase 1)

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Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council (the Council) is responsible for a lot of the public services that people who live in RCT use day-to-day. This includes social care and services for the elderly, leisure centres, theatres, libraries, street cleaning and waste collection, licensing, parks and providing funding for our schools and working in partnership with them to deliver high quality education for children and young people.

Doing all of this requires a lot of staff (the Council currently employs around 10,000 people, most of whom live in RCT) and a lot of money. Each year the Council has to decide how best to use the money it has. Most of this money (79%) comes from Welsh Government. The rest comes from Council Tax. If needed, the Council can take money from its own reserves.

There are links to our on-line videos for further information on how the Council’s budget works, how the budget is spent, Council Tax and Council Reserves in the menu on the right or towards the bottom of this page.

For the past few years the cost of running Council services has gone up faster than the amount of funding we receive has and has required the Council to address significant budget gaps. This picture is expected to continue, with the Council estimating a budget gap of £26 million for the next financial year (April 2027 to March 2028).

Your voice really matters in these decisions, and there are different ways you can tell us what you think. At the bottom of this page there is a survey you can fill in online, or you can ask for a printed version (our contact details are listed under “Who’s Listening”). We’ve also got an Easy Read survey which you can print yourself or ask to have sent to you, and we are going to be travelling around RCT to speak to people in the community. Please take a look at the list of events to see where your nearest opportunity to talk to us in person will be.

You can also have a go at our interactive Budget Balance – this lets you see all the different parts of the Council and the services to be funded, and tell us how you think the money we have should be shared out between them all.

After this consultation ends on 14 December 2026 we will think about everything people have told us including you, other members of the public, and Council staff. We will then write a draft Budget Strategy for 2027-28 and ask everyone for more thoughts and opinions on that. If you would like to be emailed when the Draft Budget Strategy is made public please click here to leave your email address.