Let's Talk Budget 2025 - 2026 (Phase 1)

Click here for Cymraeg

This consultation has now ended. The results of this project are now being analysed, and we will add links to reports and further information when they are available.

We are planning our Budget for 2025 – 2026

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 over 10,000 people, most of whom live in RCT) and a lot of money. The Council gets money from Welsh Government (78%), Council Tax collected (21%) and Council Reserves used alongside. However, for the past few years the amount of funding the Council has received has not increased in line with the cost of running services and has required the Council to address significant budget gaps. This picture is expected to continue, with the Council projecting a budget gap of £35 million for the next financial year (April 2025 to March 2026).

There are links on the right-hand side of this page to more information on the Council’s finances. You can also read there about what services the Council is responsible for, and find out where and when we will be speaking directly to people in RCT about the Budget.

We would be very grateful for your thoughts about the Budget for the next year (the financial year runs from April 2025 to March 2026). Please click here to take part in our survey, and perhaps have a go at our interactive Budget Balance, where you can see how investing more in some services must be balanced against savings in other areas.

We will be looking at all the feedback and comments sent in as we work on the new Budget plan, called a Budget Strategy. Your views, alongside the detailed work of Council staff, managers and leaders, will be a key part of our decision making.

After this first phase we will develop a Draft Budget Strategy for 2025-26. We will also publish the report on this consultation, so that you can see what people told us and how that informed the work on the Draft Strategy. Phase Two of the Budget Consultation will begin in late January / early February 2025.

Thank you for your time and for your views!

CLICK HERE FOR THE SURVEY
CLICK HERE FOR THE BUDGET BALANCE