Have your say on Croydon's budget proposals 2025/2026

Have your say on our 2025/26 budget

	Croydon is London’s largest borough. We are home to 390,800 people. The council provides hundreds of services that our residents and businesses rely on every day.
From keeping the streets clean and safe, to protecting vulnerable children and adults - and many more. Some of these services are statutory, meaning we are required to provide them by law. Others are discretionary.
	Every year the council is required by law to set a balanced budget, setting out where we will invest and where we’ll make savings. More than 50% of our money is spent on supporting the most vulnerable residents in Croydon - older people, and children and young people.

We work in close partnership with many other organisations, such as the police, health and transport, but the council does not run these services.

Our budget proposals

In our 2025/26 budget, we set out the action we are taking to help meet our financial challenges.

In the past three years, through focusing on fixing our finances, Croydon has saved £137m.

We plan to deliver a further £30m of savings this financial year, and our budget proposals for 2025/26 include another £22m savings.

But the size of the challenge can’t be fixed through savings or stopping services. So our budget proposals include plans to invest in changing the way our council works.

We plan to save money in a way that puts residents first - by becoming the most cost effective, efficient council in London.

Our Future Croydon transformation plan sets out how we will do this by:

• Acting more effectively as ‘one council’. This means making it simpler for residents to access council services – providing easier ways to access information and contact the council, including ‘self-service’ digital options where appropriate.
• Working even more closely with partners. This means changing how some services are delivered to better match residents’ priorities, and to deliver better value. This includes working more closely with the voluntary sector, public sector, businesses and others.
• Organising to become the most cost-effective council in London. This means simplifying council teams and investing in digital tools to support the workforce and provide a better service for residents.
• Helping to restore a sense of pride in Croydon as a place. This means putting even more focus on attracting investment into Croydon, regenerating the town centre and local neighbourhoods to help rebuild pride in the borough.

The scale of our financial challenge means Croydon is going to continue to need extra help from the government next year.

In previous years, this has been in the form of a capitalisation direction for £38m.

A capitalisation direction allows councils with budget pressures to charge revenue expenditure to capital, which is then paid back over an extended period.

There is uncertainty for all local authorities until the government sets out funding levels for individual councils in their autumn budget on 30 October.

Once we know the full details of the budget, there may be changes to our proposals.

That is why we will not be formally requesting government support until after that time.

The Executive Mayor has pledged not to increase council tax above the referendum limit set by the government for all London councils, this year or in future years.

Our budget proposals include a 4.99% council tax increase for next year, which is based on our estimation of what the cap might be.

You can read more about our proposals, including savings and investment, in the budget report.

Where the council gets its money from

Croydon Council gets its income from several sources set out in the graph below.

We have to decide how we will spend that money on a huge range of services.

These include protecting vulnerable children and adults, preventing homelessness, keeping streets clean and safe, looking after parks, leisure centres and libraries – and many more.

When we plan our budget, we plan for rising demand for services and inflation.

How the council spends its money

This shows the 2024/2025 gross expenditure, less fees and charges*. For every pound we spend, this is how it is split between different services.

*Figures are based on spending around £400m on our services plus government grants and additional income received in 2024/25.

This shows the council’s general fund. It doesn’t include ringfenced funding, for example, for council homes. Most of the council’s money goes on protecting vulnerable adults and children.