North Somerset Council’s Cllr Mike Bell has asked us to share this information –
Like many councils across the country, we’re facing an unprecedented financial challenge. After years of austerity and reductions in government funding, we quite simply don’t have enough income to cover our forecast expenditure. We are going to have to make tough decisions in the coming months, and the feedback of residents, of partners and our town and parish council colleagues is vital to help us do that.
We have now launched our annual budget development engagement exercise and are inviting residents and partners to give their views both in our online budget development survey and via our innovative budget simulator where you can ‘build your own budget’ – reducing spend and increasing income as needed to balance the budget for the three year period 2025 to 2028.
We will also be holding a series of workshops over the coming weeks with members of our Citizens’ Panel – https://online1.snapsurveys.com/…/e54e406e-3db9-4bbf… to run through the survey and the simulator as well as two residents’ Q&A drop-in sessions at the Town Hall and in Castlewood.
• Thursday 7 November between 5.30pm and 7pm at the Town Hall in Weston-super-Mare.
• Thursday 14 November between 5.30pm and 7pm at North Somerset Council’s ‘Castlewood’ office in Clevedon.
The information collected as part of the survey, budget simulator and in the workshops and drop-ins will be used to inform the development of the budget in advance of papers to executive on the 4 December.
We encourage all residents to take part and have their say in shaping North Somerset’s future budget.