Each year Parish Councils are required to produce a budget for the coming financial year, beginning in April, before submitting a precept demand to its charging authority, in this area Swindon Borough Council. The precept demand represents the specific amount of funding Parish Council’s need to raise through taxation, which must be collected by its charging authority through council tax.

St Andrews is a medium-sized Parish, with a comparatively small council, but is still responsible for the delivery of crucial local services. The Parish Council through its officers and Councillors has worked attentively to produce a financially responsible and balanced budget for the coming year. The priorities of this budget are to enable St Andrews Parish Council; to guarantee quality services, deliver completely new services, make necessary capital investments, and support community projects. The budget acknowledges the additional cost pressures created by National Government decisions and reductions in funding by Swindon Borough Council.

St Andrews Parish Council's overall precept request is £699,100 for 2025/26. For a typical Band D home, this equates to £97.92 per year or £1.88 per week. This is an annual increase of £23.00, which is equivalent to an additional 44p per week.

While St Andrews Parish Council is determined to deliver the highest standards for our residents across all our services, we understand that increases in our precept can impact on families and households. No increase in our precept is desirable and we have included within the budget efficiency savings, that will not have an impact on the services residents receive. We want to assure residents that these decisions regarding the precept are not made lightly but are necessary to deliver services, and the decisions are made with careful consideration.

As a result of this budget, St Andrews Parish Council continues to have the lowest precept in North Swindon, and 2nd lowest in the Town of Swindon. The precept is lower than all our neighbouring Parish Councils. While the increase in cash terms is lower than neighbouring Councils – it appears higher as a percentage because St Andrews Parish Councils precept starts at a significantly lower level.

Parish residents will shortly begin to notice the rollout of new services, including weed spraying and road sweeping. These are only two examples of services that should already be undertaken by Swindon Borough Council. However, residents have reported the frequency and quality of these services as deteriorating for quite some time and has not gone unnoticed by the Parish Council as well. Faced with this, and the growing concern about funding from Swindon Borough Council, the Parish is exploring ways the services still get done, while keeping the cost as low as possible to residents through the precept.

Key Budget Allocations for the 2025/26 Year

National Insurance Liability Increase

The increase in National Insurance employer’s contributions, mandated by the current government, has added significant costs to the budget. For the Parish’s staff alone, the increased NI cost is £51,041. Despite this increase, we have ensured that it does not impact services residents receive or the planned projects for this year.

Additional Hedge and Grass Cutting Equipment

We are investing in new hedge and grass cutting equipment to improve the maintenance of our public spaces. St Andrews Parish Council’s in house Grounds Maintenance team, save a considerable amount of time and cost versus a contractor, enabling the Parish to cover more ground and increase the frequency of grass and hedge cutting.

Replacement of Grounds Maintenance Vehicles

The fleet of vehicles the Council uses to undertake work like grass cutting, emptying the bins, hedge cutting, are leased and replaced when vehicles reach the end of life. This year, there are a number of large vehicle leases which are scheduled to be renewed, so the Grounds Maintenance Team have the right equipment to continue to maintain the Parish.

New Weed Spraying and Road Sweeping Services

The Parish Council is trialling weed spraying and road sweeping this year, in response to Swindon Borough Council’s reduction in both services. We are also keen to prioritise action, taking on board the increasing feedback from resident requests. This initiative will be kept under review as to its effectiveness throughout the year, but requires no additional equipment to deliver. Our aim will be to keep public spaces and footpaths clean and well-maintained as well as roads.

Supporting Youth Events

The Youth Committee continues to develop project ideas that benefit young people. We are allocating funds through the budget for the continued youth projects and events over the year, such as fun-days, summer camps and seasonal events.

Parish Office

We continue to press forward with plans to build a Council office and meeting space for the parish, to free-up capacity at Redhouse Community Centre, which residents can benefit from. Further exploration of the design will be made and then put out for consultation with residents. In the meantime, the Council continues to operate behind Redhouse Community Centre.

Repairs and Investment in Play Parks

Throughout the year, the budget will enable us to repair or replace outdated or broken play equipment. We have also been committed for several years to looking for places to install fully accessible play equipment that all children can use, and we are continuing this into 2025-26.

Swindon Borough Council Collaboration

Whilst Swindon Borough Council has suffered because of the national reduction in funding we remain committed to working in partnership with them on community events and services. St Andrews Parish Council is a member of the Swindon Local Council Forum, where issues and concerns around services are discussed with Swindon Borough Council. Our interest is always going to be delivering high-quality, value money services for St Andrews Parish residents.

Budget Planning Process

The budget planning process is transparent and involves careful consultation with various groups and Parish Committees. This is the process that has been followed this year:

Preparation

The Parish’s acting Proper Officer and Finance Officer began by reviewing last year’s budget, current services, predicted costs, and income for the coming year.

Consultation with Committees

Committees such as Grounds Maintenance and Play Areas, Youth, and Redhouse Community Centre were consulted to gather input on this year’s priorities, and to identify possible areas for savings. Each committee reviews the projects and services relevant to their area of focus and contributes ideas for the coming year.

Engagement with Residents

Each Parish meeting since November has tackled some aspect of the budget that residents have raised. Residents can either attend any of our Committee or Full Council meetings to make their representations, or contact the Clerk or Chairman. As always public participation has shaped the Parish’s spending priorities, and we welcome that input from residents greatly.

Drafting the Budget

After gathering input, the acting Proper Officer drafts the proposed budget, outlining projected expenditures, income, and reserves.

Approval

The proposed budget is presented to the full Parish Council for discussion and approval. This year, because the information on the Parish’s tax base was not provided by Swindon Borough Council in time for our January meeting, where the proposed budget was discussed, a supplementary meeting in February was needed to agree the budget. At this stage any necessary adjustments can be made to ensure the budget aligns with the community’s needs and expectations.

Review and Management

Throughout the year, the Parish Council closely monitors progress on budgeted projects and spending. We regularly review financial reports to ensure that the budget is being managed effectively and make adjustments as needed.

The budget for 2025-26 will be made available on the Parish Council’s website. If you have any questions or would like further information about the budget, please do not hesitate to contact St Andrews Parish Council.