The extent of the Conservative Hampshire County Council administration’s mishandling of Hampshire’s budget is revealed in an unsustainable £97.6 million budget shortfall for FY 2025/26 – and they are close to exhausting the County’s usable budget bridging reserve funds!
This situation has been allowed to develop for years under the combination of the previous Conservative Government and the Conservative HCC administration. The financial pressures stem from years of government underfunding, failure to keep pace with inflation, and an unprecedented demand for core services, particularly social care for adults and children. Never prepared to face the need to raise revenues, the Conservatives have simply buried their heads in the sand and allowed financial pressures to build. They have frankly lacked the courage to raise revenues to meet expenses.
As previously reported, they have been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years (see linked article below). Now they can hide they state of affairs that they have dragged Hampshire into no longer. They are close to exhausting Hampshire’s available reserve funds. The Conservatives know this well, and they have had to admit so in the 2025/26 Budget, but they have hidden this information away deep within an obscure appendix.
That Revenue Budget Appendix 10 -Reserves Strategy 2025-26 states:
The only path now left open to HCC is to make swinging cuts to services across Hampshire. The details of these cuts have yet to be revealed. When they are, the extent of the Tory mishandling of the Hampshire budget will be clearly exposed. Unfortunately, this revelation will come at a painful personal cost to many Hampshire residents who will lose valued services, and who for years have been mislead by the Conservatives into believing that you ‘can have your cake and eat it’. The Conservatives have tried to hide from reality for years and in doing so have created a very serious and ugly situation for Hampshire.
Conservative led Hampshire County Council are facing a gaping £132 million hole in their budget from April 2025. Amongst their proposals to address it is a drastic cut of over 25% in their road maintenance spending.