North Herts Council 2025/26 budget agreed reinforcing sustainability priority

The budget for the next financial year, April 2025 to March 2026, was approved by councillors at last night’s Full Council meeting (Thursday 27 February).

The commitments in the budget include:

• An extra £30k for our Area Forums to support more local projects that make a real difference to our communities.
• Expanding our Environmental Health team to help us further strengthen this vital statutory service that supports the health of our district and residents. This includes additional food safety visits, air quality and water testing, bringing empty homes back in to use and providing housing grants.
• Additional ongoing capacity in our housing team to support homelessness.
• A crime prevention budget to deliver measures that will help prevent crime and anti-social behaviour from escalating. This includes an extra Community Safety Officer, to particularly support our rural communities.
• Continuing investment in resource to deliver our Economic Development and Tourism Strategy to support economic growth in North Herts.
• Continuing investment in resource to support and monitor actions to deliver our Climate Change strategy, including delivering sustainability and our net zero targets.
• A commitment to fully investigate options for a learner pool at Royston, to see if there is an affordable solution. This will include continuing to seek grants and contributions from others.

In line with the majority of other district and borough councils in Hertfordshire and England, the North Herts Council portion of council tax will rise by 2.99%. This means the North Herts element of the council tax bill for a band D property will increase by £7.77, from £260.01 to £267.78.

Council tax bills will be issued to households in March and include details of how money is allocated between North Herts Council (which gets 11.6%), Hertfordshire County Council, (76.9%), Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner (11.5%) and any parish or town councils in your area.

Your council tax enables North Herts Council to:

• collect recycling and waste from over 58,000 households
• clean over 400 miles of streets
• maintain 100 hectares of parks and gardens
• run Letchworth, Hitchin and Royston leisure centres
• send 57% of household waste for re-use, recycling and composting
• maintain Letchworth and Hitchin lidos and four splash parks in the district
• provide housing advice and homelessness support, including temporary accommodation needs
• improve our environment and combat climate change
• run active community events, like our Healthy Hubs

Cllr Daniel Allen, Leader of the Council, said: “As we set our budget for the coming year, we remain focused on delivering the essential services our residents rely on while ensuring financial sustainability for the future. Like many councils, we face significant challenges due to years of previous conservative underfunding, but we are committed to making careful, responsible decisions to protect and enhance our communities.

"We are working hard to find the right balance, exploring ways to increase income and improve efficiency while safeguarding vital services. Our commitment to sustainability remains at the heart of our approach, ensuring that North Herts continues to be a great place to live and work, both now and in the future."

Cllr Ian Albert, Executive Member for Finance, said: “We welcome the government proposals to move to multi-year settlements later this year. It will be the first time we have had a multi-year settlement since 2016 and will enable us to plan ahead with greater certainty. Until then, as we can’t be sure what our funding will be beyond the coming year, we need to take a prudent and sustainable approach, alongside extending our current services to residents where we can sensibly afford to do so.

"The level of our resources in North Herts mean we have some time to consider what future changes to spending and income may look like for the 2026/27 financial year and beyond. We are committed though to involving our residents in that conversation via a public consultation this summer.”

For more information on how North Herts Council make their 11.6% of your Council Tax go along way with the services they provide, visit: How your council tax is spent

At the January Council meeting we set out how we would continue to improve the support to the lowest income households. Our banded Council Tax Reduction Scheme continues to provide support to those that are most in need and we recently uprated the bands to help prevent some residents from dropping out of Council Tax support. Discounts, exemptions and refunds

If you are struggling with the cost of living check out our a one-stop source of help and information – www.north-herts.gov.uk/EasingTheSqueeze

If you are in crisis, please call HertsHelp on 0300 123 4044.