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Budget 2025/26

Find out about the budget that has been approved by Council for the 2025/26 financial year.

At Full Council on 27 February, the 2025/26 budget was agreed and the Council Tax was set. The balanced budget makes sure that we can continue to deliver £380 million worth of services.

An increase to Council Tax by 2.75% was agreed and understanding the pressures in adult social care, it was also agreed that the 2% adult social care precept is also charged. This makes a total increase to Council Tax of 4.75%.

This increase is below the Government cap of 4.99%, recognising the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, which is affecting all households. The costs of providing our services to you is also having a financial impact for us.

Each 1% increase in Council Tax generates £840,000 in income. This is the only means that we have to raise more funding for our place-based and housing services.

We have read your feedback from the Budget Consultation. With this feedback, and the final allocations of funding from Government being confirmed, changes were made to the initial proposals. These include:

  • An allocation of £1.4 million to support council led housing developments across the Bay.  
  • An allocation of £500,000 to invest in play parks in all three towns.  
  • An increase of £3.7 million to Children's Services. This includes over £1 million of investment in new activity and services. This is to ensure children and young people receive the support they need to succeed in the future,   
  • A further allocation of £150,000 to increase the support for events in Torbay. This will allow our events team to build on the success of much-valued events such as the ‘Bay of Lights’. It will also enable the newly appointed Town Centres Manager to improve the offer of events across all three towns.   
  • To support sport in Torbay, £75,000 is allocated to the base budget. This will ensure sport organisations can continue to access funding. Helping them work towards becoming financially sustainable in the future.  
  • Additional Government funding for social care will be shared equally between adults and children's social care. This includes a further £850,000 to support continuing transformational activity. This is to improve outcomes and reduce the costs of providing integrated adult social care and health care services to Torbay residents. 

Initial consultation documents

Final papers