What your council tax pays for
Find out what services your council tax is being spent on.
Council Tax is how residents of an area help pay for the cost of local services.
This money, together with Government grants and business rates, is used to pay for vital local services like schools, rubbish and recycling collections and libraries, as well as services provided by other London-wide organisations like the Greater London Authority (GLA) for police, fire brigade and transport.
Council tax is not a separate part of our budget - like all our funding it goes towards paying for key services.
Council tax accounts for around 13 per cent of council funding. The rest comes from government grants and services that we charge for. Find out how we work out your bill.
Council tax spending 2024/25
This table gives you our estimated income and spending for council services for 2024/25.You can see a similar table for 2023/24 at the bottom of the page for comparison.
| Service Directorate | Spending | Income | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult Social Services | £163.4m | £91.7m | £52.2m |
| Chief Executive's | £0.4m | £1.4m | £1.3m |
| Children and Young People | £325.7m | £237.5 | £87.6m |
| Community Engagement and Wellbeing | £21.5m | £7.6m | £13.9m |
| Community Wealth Building | £42.9m | £25.2m | £17.7m |
| Environment and Climate Change | £76m | £86.1m | £10m |
| Homes and Neighbourhoods | £36.3m | £23.2m | £13.1m |
| Public Health | £31.6m | £31.6m | £0 |
| Resources and central costs | £271.6m | £331.9m | £60.3m |
| Contingency allocation | £5m | £0 | £5m |
| Total | £974.426m | £856.205m | £118.221m |
Reason for increase in council tax requirement 2024/25
This table explains the increase of £5.2m in the council tax requirement between 2023/24 and 2024/25.
| Council Tax requirement 2023/24 | £113.040m |
|---|---|
| Inflation, demographic pressures and other growth | £37.077m |
| Government funding | -£15.402m |
| Savings | -£10.770m |
| Retained Business Rates income | -£3.330m |
| Reduction in planned transfer to reserves and contingency | -£2.395m |
| Council Tax requirement 2024/5 | £118.221m |
Council tax spending 2023/24
This table shows how your council tax was spent in 2023-24.
| Services | Spending | Income | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult Social Services | £143.9m | £91.7m | £52.2m |
| Chief Executive | £2.7m | £1.4m | £1.3m |
| Community Wealth Building | £42.5m | £21.2m | £21.3m |
| Children's Services | £325.1m | £237.5 | £87.6m |
| Environment | £95.8m | £95.3m | £0.5m |
| Fairer Together | £14.8m | £6.2m | £8.6m |
| Homes and Neighbourhoods (including Housing Revenue Account) | £262.3m | £254.4m | £7.9m |
| Public Health | £30.4m | £30.4m | £0 |
| Resources Directorate and central costs and income | £289.7m | £366.1m | -£76.4m |
| Contingency allocation | £10m | £0 | £10m |
| Total | £1,217.2m | £1,104.2m | £113m |
What else your council tax funds
Find out more about other organisations and projects that your council tax funds on the GLA website.