Highlands budget challenge

Overview

If you were in charge at Highlands Council and you had to find savings of £25 million over the next 4 years, how would you go about doing so?

• Which services are the most important?
• Which services would you stop providing?
• Would you increase council tax to offset cuts to budgets?

How does simulator work?

When you select "Create Your Budget" you will see a list of the seven core services that the council provides. Under each service there is a mix of cost savings and an explanation of the consequence of reducing the spend for this service.

There is also an option to increase the budget for each service, limited to a maximum of 10%.

Using the slide bars you can reduce or increase each service budget with the challenge of delivering the required savings. When you have made the savings the box on the top left goes green and a tick is displayed.

You can also choose to increase Council Tax by increments of 0.25% above the base increase which is expected to be set at 3.75% for next year. (April 2017 - March