2025/26 Budget

Date published: 12th February 2025

North Norfolk District Council is consulting its residents for the 2025/26 budget, seeking views on whether the authority should increase its proportion of the 2025/26 Council Tax bills.

Each year, the Council sets its budget, and the Council Tax collected is one source of income that funds the functions and services it provides to residents in North Norfolk.

Another key source of income is monies received from Central Government for local authorities – in previous years this has reduced, on the assumption that Councils will raise their Council Tax precepts by the maximum amount available.

North Norfolk District Council has not received an increase in funding from central government, despite costs increasing because of inflation.

Following the agreement of a new levy, from April 2025, the Council will be able to introduce a 100% Council Tax premium on second homes and are planning to use most of the extra income, along with a contribution from the County Council’s share of this, on ways to provide more housing in the district.

This figure is approximately £1.8m and has reduced the total 3 yr deficit from £9m to £2m. The Council has a legal responsibility to balance the budget for each financial year, and to do this, has undertaken an extensive cost-saving exercise, identifying £1.8m in savings to the budget.

If the Council opts to freeze Council Tax, additional savings of £210,000 must be found elsewhere to balance the budget, as the Council didn’t get any increase in government grants this year to cover our increase in costs, such as inflationary increases on existing contracts and services including the Council’s outsourced waste and recycling and leisure contracts which are significant.

Any freeze of the District Council’s element of the Council Tax bill is therefore likely to involve further difficult decisions about potential service reductions.
For the average band D property, this increase would represent an increase of £5.04 a year.

The £5.04 per year figure is based on a Band D property and will be more or less than this dependent on which council tax band your property sits in scaled between bands – for properties in Bands A-D, which represents over 75 percent of properties in North Norfolk, the Council Tax increase would be 10p or less per week. This is still one of the lowest Council Tax precept levels in the country.

The Council collects Council Tax but retains just 8p of every £1 of Council Tax, with 92p going to Norfolk County Council, the Police & Crime Commissioner and Town & Parish Councils.

View the consultation

You can view the proposed Budget here

If you are a business and wish to respond to this consultation in regards to Business Rates, please email business.rates@north-norfolk.gov.uk with the subject line 'Business Rates 2025/26'