Deciding who will get to spend the huge pot of our public money
29/04/2025
How the vast majority of your council tax is spent will be decided by those elected on Thursday
Polling stations will open for this year’s Local Elections at 7am this Thursday.
Everyone on the electoral role in our area will get to vote for the people they want to represent us at either Oxfordshire County Council or West Northamptonshire Council.
Both Council’s have huge budgets to spend and the people we elect will get a say on how the money is spent.
In Oxfordshire the County Council’s levy accounts for 79 percent of the Council Tax we pay –£1,911 for a Band D property this year.
Just over half (57 percent) of the council’s income comes from our Council Tax, with the rest from government grants, business rates and fees and charges.
At the moment around half of the council’s income is spent on social care. The next biggest areas of spend are 19 percent on education and 8 percent on roads.
Whoever is in charge at the Council – currently the Liberal Democrats with the Greens – gets to decide on how much money is spent in each area of the county’s work and what it is spent on within those areas.
That’s why each of the political parties are keen to win as many seats as possible as any group with over half the councillors can take overall charge and make the decisions.
The group in control can focus the money towards the projects they particularly support within the council’s areas of responsibility.
In West Northamptonshire the budget is even bigger as just one unitary council does the work of both a county and district council. That means whichever group takes control there will decide how the money is spent in even more areas of our lives.
For anyone trying to decide how to vote, understanding the spending priorities of each candidate is a good starting point for making a decision.
Published: by the Banbury FM News Team
