West Berkshire Council challenges residents to set their own 'budget'

Local authority hopes simulator will make people more aware of the difficult financial choices it faces

WEST Berkshire Council is challenging residents to take part in a budget-setting exercise so they can find out for themselves the difficult financial decisions the local authority faces.

Residents will be able to build their own council budget via an online budget simulator.

Using the budget simulator, residents could, for example, suggest changes to council tax and other services the local authority might invest in and see the consequences of their choices

The council hopes that by taking the ‘Budget Challenge’, people can better understand why it has to make some of the decisions it does.

For the year ahead (2021/22) West Berkshire has to balance the budget and save a further £7.3m.

West Berkshire’s executive member for finance Ross Mackinnon (Con, Bradfield) said: “There is no doubt that budget setting will continue to be a fine balancing act for all councils.

“We’re giving our residents the challenge of balancing what we estimate will be the budget for 2021/22 while continuing to focus on delivering the services that they want and value.

“We want them to take up the challenge of balancing the budget, prioritising the services that are most important to them using our budget simulator.

“Their views will then feed into future budgets.”

Once the challenge has closed, the council will look at where residents chose to spend the money and use this to help inform how it set budgets in the future.

The budget simulator can be found at https://info.westberks.gov.uk/budgetchallenge until midnight on Sunday, January 10, 2021.