North Ayrshire Council Approves 2025/25 Budget

North Ayrshire Council has approved its Budget for 2025/26 after a meeting of Elected Members.

This was widely recognised as one of the most challenging budgets the Council has ever had to set with a £15.7million funding gap.

Following last year’s Council Tax freeze, elected members agreed to raise Council Tax by 7 per cent from April.

This is one of the lowest Council Tax increases approved in Scotland and reflects the determination to minimise any rises while protecting services.

Meeting today, (Wednesday, February 26, 2025), Elected Members approved a £459 million budget which had a clear focus on measures to help residents while maintaining frontline services and protecting jobs.

Following consideration, elected members voted 18-12 for a Budget which proposed a series of measures.

The budget includes proposals for further investment of £1million in 2025/26 across our roads infrastructure as well as additional funding of £250,000 in the Streetscene service.

In addition, £300,000 will be invested into a proposal to create a wellbeing enterprise hub at the Greenwood Conference Centre.

Following an extensive community engagement exercise held late last year, a number of potential savings were not brought forward to the Budget meeting, such as the introduction of car parking charges, closure of Arran Outdoor Education Centre, and the closure of a number of libraries. Elected members also agreed not to move forward with proposed savings at Eglinton Country Park.

For 2025/26, the Council received a £7.254million increase in core grant funding from the Scottish Government, worth about 2.05 per cent of its overall Budget.

A large proportion of the increase was consumed by the UK-wide increase in employer National Insurance. Funding from the Scottish Government will cover 60% of the extra costs but the council will have to fund the shortfall of approximately £2.65m.

This extra financial burden is one of the reasons why North Ayrshire Council faced a funding gap of around £15.7m for 2025/26. This is being managed in a number of ways, such as using about £4million in reserves, income from a Council Tax premium on second homes, and savings across Council services.

It is anticipated that the equivalent of 45.2 full-time posts will be removed. North Ayrshire Council has a policy of no compulsory redundancies, therefore it is anticipated that this will be managed through natural turnover, vacancies, redeployment and voluntary early release.