Suffolk County Council wants to hear your views on how we manage our budget for 2025/26. Can you spare a few minutes to answer three quick questions?

Our short survey asks for your views on the council’s financial priorities and council tax. You can find it at www.suffolk.gov.uk/budget, and it’s open until Monday 16 December.

This year, we are preparing to navigate another challenging budget. Demand for essential public services like adult and children’s care continues to rise, but public funding has not kept pace. Balancing the books continues to require new approaches and tough choices.

Your feedback will help guide those decisions, ensuring we prioritise the services that matter most to Suffolk residents.

This year, Suffolk County Council has a budget of around £752 million. Of every pound we spend, 77 pence is dedicated to supporting people directly.

This includes vital services such as adult and children’s care and public health. These services are a lifeline for many, providing essential support to some of our most vulnerable residents.

The remaining 23% of the budget is used to fund other critical areas such as fire and rescue, maintaining roads and pavements, climate initiatives, managing waste, and bus services.

It also supports the infrastructure, staffing and technology needed to keep the council and its services running.

As a council, we are legally required to deliver most of these services.

This means we cannot choose to simply stop maintaining local roads, supporting vulnerable children and adults or disposing of Suffolk’s waste.

What we can do, and strive to do constantly, is find more efficient ways to deliver these services, ensuring every pound is spent as effectively as possible.

We’ve also built up reserves to help during tough times, but these reserves are now being drawn down. This is not a long-term solution. We cannot keep doing it.

Despite these challenges, we are on track to meet this year’s budget, which includes £43million in savings.

This is thanks to the hard work and dedication of our staff who have managed resources carefully and responsibly.

However, financial pressures remain, particularly as we head into the winter months. This is a time when demand for adult social care increases, and our Highways teams work around the clock to keep roads safe in difficult conditions.

These pressures are not unique to Suffolk; councils across the country are grappling with similar challenges.

Many are facing critical funding issues as they attempt to balance rising costs with stagnant or reduced public funding.

To address these issues, the council regularly lobbies the government for additional support.

We work closely with Suffolk’s MPs to explain our financial situation and advocate for fairer funding.

The council’s leaders also meet with government representatives to highlight where increased investment is most urgently needed.

These efforts have had some success. For example, in the Chancellor’s Autumn budget, there was recognition of local councils’ needs with additional investment in roads and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision.

However, these gains are offset by new cost pressures, such as the rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions, which will follow from next April. But it remains uncertain whether local governments, including Suffolk, will receive adequate compensation for these increases.

We know that we will not receive any compensation towards the increased costs of our suppliers.

Meanwhile, the government has announced that the rural services grant, which has helped councils in sparsely populated areas manage the high costs of service delivery, will be scrapped and redirected elsewhere. This will adversely impact councils like Suffolk.

The Local Government Provisional Financial Settlement, due for publication before Christmas, will provide a clearer picture of what funding Suffolk can expect for the coming year.

Until then, the full implications of these policy changes will remain uncertain.

Beyond government funding, the other significant way we can increase our budget is by raising council tax.

This would provide more money to support the services we deliver, from adult and children’s care to road maintenance.

We know that any decision to raise council tax has a direct impact on our residents, which is why we are seeking your views before making any decisions. Our survey asks whether you would support an increase in Council Tax next year.

Without adequate funding, some services currently provided may need to be delivered differently and more cost-effectively. These decisions will affect everyone in Suffolk, so your views, via the survey, are important.

Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts by visiting www.suffolk.gov.uk/budget

This column has been written by Councillor Richard Smith MVO, Suffolk County Council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for finance, economic development and skills