Portsmouth Council budget figures

What Portsmouth Council reported to central government. Every figure below is taken from a published return and converted from the thousands the return states into whole pounds. Nothing is estimated, and where the return carries no figure the section is absent rather than blank.

Unitary authority, filing as a unitary. Negative figures mean net income, which is what the return means by them.

2024/25 in summary

£368,150,000 Approved budget
£176,053,000 Outturn, what was actually spent
£368,150,000 Total service expenditure
£100,925,000 Council tax requirement

Source: GOV.UK MHCLG Revenue Account Budget (RA) 2024/25 , published 2024-06-20.

Approved budget by year

  • 2021/22£293.2m (outturn £180.9m)
  • 2022/23£291.6m (outturn £161.0m)
  • 2023/24£327.7m (outturn £145.5m)
  • 2024/25£368.1m (outturn £176.1m)

These are cash figures as reported. They are not adjusted for inflation, so a rise between two years is not on its own a rise in what the council does. A figure in brackets is the outturn, what the council actually spent that year, shown alongside the budget it set.

Where the money went in 2024/25

  • Education services£124.1m
  • Adult Social Care£83.4m
  • Children Social Care£58.5m
  • Environmental and regulatory services£22.8m
  • Public Health£20.4m
  • Highways and transport services£17.3m
  • Cultural and related services£16.1m
  • Housing services (GFRA only)£14.6m
  • Central services£8.7m
  • Planning and development services£2.3m

These are the standard service lines in the published return. They do not add up to net revenue expenditure: financing, movements in reserves and central adjustments sit outside them.

Where the money came from in 2024/25

Funding by source
Source Amount Share of the parts shown Line in the return
Revenue support grant £14,470,000 7.8% revenue_support_grant
Retained income from rate retention scheme £70,907,000 38.1% retained_income_from_rate_retention_scheme
Council tax requirement £100,925,000 54.2% council_tax_requirement

These are the funding lines the outturn return carries. They are not the whole of the council's income: fees, charges, ring-fenced grants and income within service lines are outside them, so the shares above are shares of what is shown, not of everything the council received.

Band D, this body's own element

  • 2014/15£1,172
  • 2015/16£1,172
  • 2016/17£1,218
  • 2017/18£1,279
  • 2018/19£1,337
  • 2019/20£1,397
  • 2020/21£1,452
  • 2021/22£1,525
  • 2022/23£1,570
  • 2023/24£1,649
  • 2024/25£1,731
  • 2025/26£1,818

This is the part of a Band D bill that goes to Portsmouth Council and nothing else. A household's whole bill can also carry amounts for other precepting bodies. Those are separate bodies with separate accounts.

Reserves

Reserves at the start and end of each year
Year Earmarked at 1 April Earmarked at 31 March Unallocated at 1 April Unallocated at 31 March
2021/22 £222,356,000 £192,202,000 £23,373,000 £21,423,000
2022/23 £202,615,000 £182,495,000 £21,423,000 £21,516,000
2023/24 £182,495,000 £205,860,000 £21,516,000 £21,410,000
2024/25 £211,570,000 £224,071,000 £21,410,000 £22,002,000

Earmarked reserves are set aside for a stated purpose. Unallocated reserves are not. A cell reading n/a is one the return carries no figure for.

Where these figures come from

This page carries no comparison between what Portsmouth Council budgeted and what it paid out. The published payment files and the net revenue return cover different money over different scopes, so a difference between them measures the difference in scope and nothing about the council.