'Potholes are the people's priority': £45m windfall for Lancashire's roads, but tough times ahead as county council sets its budget

The extra cash - which comes on top of grants received from the government - will go into highway maintenance over the next three years.

The surprise announcement by the Conservative-run authority set the backdrop to the now perennial bidding war between political leaders about who would pour the most money into the county’s potholes - with the opposition Labour group claiming their promised £12m investment would be on top of anything the Tories had offered. For their part, the Liberal Democrats proposed a £10m ”urgent highway repairs”.

The wrangle came during a more than five-hour budget meeting which saw councillors clash over a plethora of other priorities - including new schools, bus fare concessions, climate change, parking enforcement and Preston’s lucrative Corporation Street bus gate - in what is Lancashire County Council’s first budget to exceed a gross £2bn.

Meanwhile, the authority also agreed to raise council tax by 4.99 percent - the maximum amount permitted without government approval or a referendum. While opposition parties voted against the ruling group’s budget, none specifically criticised the increase, which will add £82.50 a year to Lancashire County Council’s share of the bill for a Band D property.

Deputy leader - and cabinet member for resources - Alan Vincent said of the move that the authority was “very reluctant” to make it, but that the government would have penalised it for doing anything else.

He added: “Faced with a choice between a balanced budget funding vital public services and the chaos we have seen elsewhere, we know it is the best thing to do.”

While competing assessments of past political decisions - both national and local, recent and historical - absorbed a large part of the debate, arguably one of the most significant aspects of the budget package barely got a mention: namely, the need to cut £103m in spending over the next two years.

The savings plan was set out in papers presented to the meeting, although only in broad-brush, high-level terms that made any potential impact on frontline services difficult to discern.

The lion’s share of the spending reductions are earmarked for the area that accounts for the largest part of the budget - adult services. A total of £46.7m in savings is expected to be generated across the two-year period by measures including “maximising independence” and making better use of technology to provide care.

Attempts to increase levels of in-house fostering and ensure vulnerable children are put “in the right place first time” are expected to contribute a further £10.2m.

While the budget documents stressed that the county council “remains in a relatively strong financial position” compared to many other local authorities, they also laid bare the scale of the challenge that even more financially stable councils are facing.

County Hall is forecasting £42m worth of financial pressure in 2025/26 from increased demand for its services, along with £33m in inflationary costs.

The focus of the debate, however, was largely on how the ruling group would be spending the authority’s money - and what the opposition parties would do differently given the chance.

County Cllr Vincent said the £45m capital investment in the county’s roads was “our priority, because it is our residents’ priority - and they can trust us to deliver”.

He also lauded, amongst other things, £5m in funding to improve special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services for children, cash for new secondary and primary schools in Preston and ongoing support for economic growth.

“[None of that is] done easily - all of that can only be done with an approach that secures your finances,” he told the meeting.

Outlining the Labour opposition’s additional spending plans, group leader Matthew Tomlinson said they would be "cost neutral” to the revenue budget, paid for by scrapping job posts that had been vacant, without agency cover, for more than 12 months.

Proposing moves including the reversal of cuts - put forward by the Tories last year, but only recently confirmed - to bus concessions for some young and disabled passengers, along with the creation of new posts to help people waiting for social care and SEND assessments, he suggested that they "shouldn’t be shouted down in a fit of party political pique”.

“Our vision is…to create a council that listens and leads and responds with integrity and innovation,” County Cllr Tomlinson said.

He described the bus fare changes - removing free passes for those 16-18-year-olds previously entitled to them and ending a £1 early morning fare for disabled NoW Card holders -as “a wholly unnecessary cut that hit the most vulnerable [and] reduced options for people to use public transport”. But he emphasised that Labour supported this year’s proposed budget in its entirety, meaning its own spending proposals were in addition to those made by the Conservatives.

“Not everything is party political - many of the things are just good things to be doing for this council [and] for our residents,” County Cllr Tomlinson added.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesperson John Potter set out plans to invest the cash needed to build two long-promised new primary schools in Preston - as well as pull the plug on the latest of the city’s notorious ‘bus gates’ on Corporation Street.

The traffic restriction - which bans all vehicles other than buses and Hackney taxis from a stretch of what was previously one of Preston’s most congested routes - had brought in £1.6m in fines by the end of November, just five months after it started being enforced.

County Cllr Potter said it was “universally despised” - as well as failing to change behaviour and “hurting Preston city centre”. He told the Tories it should be scrapped unless they really intended it just to be a “cash cow”.

Meanwhile, calling for the county to employ more climate change officers, Green Party group leader Gina Dowding said it was “appalling” that the two main parties were “failing to acknowledge where growth is happening in the economy”.

She added: “Growth is fairly minimal, if not stagnant, across so many sectors, but it's the green sector that is growing at a far larger rate and that is where, in Lancashire, we should be maximising our investment, too.”

BALANCING THE BOOKS

Lancashire County Council is currently forecasting that it will have overspent on its budget for the current financial year by £12.7m by the end of next month. The authority has also identified a gap of £1.5m in its plans for 2025/26, which will be covered by cash from County Hall’s transitional reserve fund.

It expects to achieve a balanced budget in 2026/27 and its transitional reserve pot - currently £125.5m - has been deemed sufficient to support the delivery of services and the county council’s operation as “a going concern”.

The authority also holds £56m in its separate County Fund reserve to absorb any unexpected financial shocks during the course of the year.

COUNCIL TAX BILLS

This is how much households in each property band will pay to Lancashire County Council in 2025/26 – with the increase compared to last year shown in brackets. Around half of properties in the county are in Bands A or B. The figures do not include the charges levied by district councils and for the operation of the police and fire services.

Band A – £1,157.19 (up by £55)

Band B – £1,350.06 (up by £64.17)

Band C – £1,542.92 (up by £73.33)

Band D – 1,735.79 (up by £82.50)

Band E – £2,121.52 (up by £100.83)

Band F – £2,507.25 (up by £119.16)

Band G – £2,892.98 (up by £137.55)

Band H – £3,471.58 (up by £165)

Source: Lancashire County Council/Local Democracy Reporting Service

BUDGET IN NUMBERS

£2.012bn - gross budget for 2025/26

£1.244bn - net budget, after income deducted

80+ - services provided to residents

£869m - gross amount to be spent on adult services - 43 percent of the gross budget

£181.5m - transitional and County Fund reserves

Source: Lancashire County Council

BUDGET BREAKDOWNS

Conservative budget (approved)

Includes:

***£70m to build one new secondary and two new primary schools in Preston by 2027 - funded by a combination of government grant, contributions from housing developers and a provisional £32.8m in borrowing;

***£45m additional capital highways investment over the next three years, mostly across the first two;

***£9.8m ongoing spend to deliver the new Lancashire Cricket ground at Farington by 2026/27;

***£7.2m, over two years, to create an innovation hub at the Samlesbury Enterprise Zone;

***£6.3m for the ‘Where Our Children Live’ strategy, including the purchase of four more county council-run children’s homes, en route to creating 15 of the facilities;

***£5m to help deliver education, health and care plans (EHCPs) for children with special needs and disabilities more quickly - with demand having risen by 48 percent just since 2022.

Labour budget additions (voted down)

***£12m one-off increase in the highways budget, reserved solely for potholes;

***£924k to introduce a care leavers bus pass for young people up to the age of 21;

***£480k for 12 new parking enforcement officers to deal with illegal parking;

***£394k to reinstate concessionary early morning £1 travel fare for disabled NoW card holders and free young persons bus travel scheme;

***£300k to create eight new posts to support families awaiting an education, health and care plan assessment for a child with special needs;

***£300k to create eight new posts to support people awaiting an adult social care assessment;

***£300k to create five additional posts in the climate change team;

***£84k to increase the county councillor grant scheme, which enables members to support good causes in their area, by £1,000 per councillor;

***£18k to introduce a member champion to combat violence against women and girls.

Funded by: disestablishment of all vacant posts for over 12 months which have not been covered by agency staff (£2.8m) and a contribution from transitional reserve fund (£12m).

What was said: Labour opposition group leader Matthew Tomlinson said the creation of new posts to help people waiting for an adult social care assessment would ensure there was “a single point of call for residents who are going through a stressful period of uncertainty and worry”.

Almost 2,700 residents had to wait longer than 28 days for an assessment during the final three months of 2024, but cabinet member for adult social care Graham Gooch insisted that they were supported during that time.

He added: “It seems quite astonishing that you want to spend £300,000 to employ eight people, not to deliver a service - but just to tell them why they’re not getting [one].”

Meanwhile, in response to being told by lead member for highways Scott Smith that Labour’s pledged highway investment "pales in comparison” to that of the Tories, County Cllr Tomlinson, said Labour had “added to” the Conservative funding, not replaced it with a lower amount.

He also said more parking attendants were needed in order to “rid our streets of the blight of illegal parking” in town centres, on housing estates and around schools, which frustrates residents.

However, cabinet member for highways Rupert Swarbrick noted that the authority only had the power to enforce parking restrictions, whereas dangerous or antisocial parking was “a police matter”. He said in response to both Labour and the Lib Dems there were already 45 parking enforcement officers - and they would always visit a site about which concerns had been raised over breaches of the rules.

Liberal Democrat budget additions (voted down)

***£25m to build two new primary schools in North West Preston;

***£10m one-off fund to address urgent highway repairs;

***£2.375m additional borrowing cost to fund capital proposals;

***£500k for the installation of pedestrian crossings in priority areas;

***£500k for traffic light improvements in areas adversely affected by new road schemes;

***£480k to create 12 new parking enforcement officers (one per district);

***£375k for six additional permanent youth workers and a senior youth worker;

***£300k to scrap the bus gate on Corporation Street, Preston;

***£150k for extra grit bin provision;

***£200k for feasibility studies into: an integrated bus pass for Lancashire; operating multi-use games areas at weekends; buying land for biodiversity net gain; and improving facilities for disabled residents.

Funded by: revenue budget (£3.88m), borrowing (£25m for new schools), one-off transfer of £11m from the transitional reserve fund (for highways repairs, pedestrian crossings and traffic light improvements);

What was said: Preston West Lib Dem John Potter accused the ruling Conservative group of repeating past mistakes by not having committed to build two new primary schools in the rapidly-expanding north west of the city. He said he had been proved right when he had called for a secondary school in the area three years ago, which the authority was only now getting around to constructing - with the price tag having gone up from £26m to £40m.

He said: “You were wrong then and I believe you're wrong now. It is £25m [for the two primaries], but you are going to have to spend it - 5,500 [new] houses in North West Preston are going to need schools.”

Land is reserved for all three facilities within housing developments being built in the area, but as the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has charted, no plans have been brought forward for the primary establishments.

However, cabinet member for education and skills Jaye Rear suggested that situation had changed, telling the budget meeting there was now “provision for one new secondary school and two new primary schools in North West Preston”.

But she added: "In order to provide new schools, we have to show the DfE [Department for Education] that we have sustained need in an area.”

County Cllr Rear said the authority would not want to build a school that ultimately was not needed and so was left standing empty, as had recently happened in Nottingham.

However, there is confusion over whether the two primary schools pledged in the budget are within the North West Masterplan area where they were originally promised - or whether one of the two is the already announced facility to be developed on the former Whittingham Hospital site.

The LDRS has approached Lancashire County Council for clarification.

Green Party budget additions (voted down)

***£239k to reinstate concessionary early morning £1 travel fare for disabled NoW card holders;

***£180k to create an additional three climate officer posts;

***£155k to reinstate free young persons bus travel scheme.

Funded by: review and disestablishment of vacant posts.

What was said: Green Party county councillor Scott Cunliffe said the impact already being felt as a result of climate change meant the authority did not only have to be concerned with carbon reduction measures, but also shifting “immediately…to adaptation” in order to deal with its effects.

Group leader Gina Dowding said “renewable energy generation [and] retrofits for our homes” should be amongst the priorities for an expanded climate change team at the county council, which she said would enable Lancashire to secure more funding from government environmental schemes.

Cabinet member for environment and climate change Shaun Turner said the authority created additional climate change posts when they had “a purpose” and had come with funding for a particular project.

“Just to put [x number] of posts in and say, ‘There you go, get on with it’ [doesn't work]," he said. He also took issue with Labour claims that the authority employed only three dedicated climate officers, responding that there were another five permanent posts, along with 10 temporary roles connected to external funding.