Central Bedfordshire Council on track for £8million underspend - but tough challenges still lie ahead
Central Bedfordshire Council is reporting an underspend of nearly £8m for the 2025/26 financial year by sticking to its revenue budget targets.
The local authority’s underlying outturn revenue position is a £7.9m underspend before creating reserves and provisions, according to Independent Aspley and Woburn councillor John Baker.
CBC planned to spend £287.7m on services across the district in the year to March 31, 2026, to pay for refuse collection and recycling, leisure facilities, libraries, parks, planning, parking, licensing, trading standards, public health and social care services.
Its revenue budget is mainly funded through council tax and business rates. The council’s budget was balanced based on including £27.2m of efficiencies amid £67.4m of pressures, said a report to its reconvened full council (budget setting) meeting in March. CBC’s draft net budget for 2026/27 is £328.2m.
Executive member for finance councillor Baker told the local democracy reporting service: “This is an excellent result for the council.
“Delivering a £7.9m surplus reflects our prudent approach to financial management and a willingness to take tough decisions,” he explained. “We’ve reduced home to school transport costs by £2.7m through route optimisation, including the use of fewer taxis.
“All council vacancies were reviewed to ensure roles are only filled where necessary. The new household waste recycling centre (tidy tip) booking system has cut usage by a fifth, helping to ensure this service is only accessed by local council taxpayers.
“The Labour government’s damaging £33m cut to our budget through its ‘fairer funding’ programme presents a major challenge. But we face the future with confidence, backed by a strong record of delivery and a credible financial plan.
“While some councillors opposed these decisions, we can only deliver high-quality public services with strong financial backing. It’s the Independent group alone that faced down the critics and took those decisions.”
The budget for the 2025/26 financial year “was tough, with many difficult efficiencies to implement”, he added. The Independent administration had budgeted for a surplus of £8.9m in the current 2026/27 financial year, which was wiped out by the government’s ‘fairer funding’ review.
Home to school transport spend for 2025/26 remained “a significant cost to the council at £17.4m and clear justification to align with other local authorities by implementing the nearest versus catchment school transport criteria”, said councillor Baker.
“With a focus now on better information technology to manage routes, detailed journey planning and improved managerial grip, we’ve seen a reduction in costs leading to the £2.7m underspend.
“I’ve agreed to use the budget underspend to increase the council’s reserves and provisions to cover such areas as redundancy, bad debts, insurance and the cost of change.
“I want to be clear it’s a one off improvement in reserves and we must move forward with budget efficiencies to manage the government’s damaging cuts of £33m by 2028/29.
“We can only continue to invest in services and deliver important projects, such as building a new care home, if the finances are managed competently.
“There’s also the looming issue of the ongoing schools high needs block deficits, with government funding for 90 per cent of the balance. Under current rules, CBC will need to account for this in 2028/29 at a cost of £12m to £15m.”