Value for money

We are committed to making every penny count towards building a better Lancashire for our residents and businesses. Like all public services, we're under serious financial pressure.

We face a big financial challenge over the next three years. We're not just looking at savings – we are also transforming how we work to ensure:

  • smarter working and innovation
  • transparent financial management
  • meaningful resident and community engagement

We will make sure our services are delivered in line with both our five-year Council Plan and Our Areas of Focus 2025-26.

Together, we can build a council that is innovative and focused on what matters most to our communities.

The financial context

We face:

  • rising demand for services
  • growing complexity in care needs
  • an ageing population
  • increasing costs
  • limited government funding

We are committed both through our priorities and our legal responsibilities to help:

  • keep adults living well and independently in their communities
  • children to have the best start in life

Demand and costs for these services are rising. These are some examples of costs we need to consider each year:

  • Home to school transport for special educational needs and disability (SEND) and mainstream schooling costs £66 million a year.
  • We spend £127 million each year supporting children in our care. A small number of our cases account for 10% of that total, which shows how complex some of our cases are.
  • Changes in national policy and local government structures add uncertainty to our planning.

We've been careful with the money we have, but now we need to think differently about how we deliver our services so we can keep helping our communities.

Our financial priorities

The council is presently forecasting it will need to save at least £100m over the next three years to ensure that essential services are delivered.

We want to make sure our services work well, are affordable and provide value for money, and we are taking action to improve them across the board.

If something isn’t working as well as it could, we’ll try innovative approaches and use technology to make things better and run more smoothly. In some cases, this will mean investing money into new ways of working so we can spend less in the future.

Most of all, we want to make sure our spending gives Lancashire residents the maximum benefit.

Our three priorities are:

Financial sustainability: Keeping our finances stable with a clear medium-term plan.

Service improvement: Enhancing adult social care and SEND, while continuing our progress in children’s services.

Council effectiveness: Strengthening how the council operates to support smooth service delivery.

Progress and next steps

We’re trying to save money and work better by improving how we do things. This means:

  • streamlining how we work
  • helping staff to do their jobs well
  • using smart ideas and technology
  • getting better value for money for the services we buy
  • making sure our buildings are being used in the best way
  • getting money from grants and other sources

We also review how we are doing compared with other organisations to find new ways to improve and save.

What we’ve done

The range of improvements we've made includes:

  • conducting a council-wide efficiency review
  • enabling staff to contribute a wide range of money-saving ideas through a new suggestions scheme
  • reducing agency staff costs by £900,000 in adult services
  • making additional minibuses available to reduce home to school transport costs
  • investing in early help and prevention in children's social care
  • strengthening our SEND workforce with skilled professionals, helping to reduce waiting lists and improve support for children and families
  • analysing the way we spend over £1 billion a year with more than 1,000 suppliers to be more cost effective
  • identifying further savings, which are now being assessed for implementation

What's next?

We are currently working on our budget for 2026/27 and would like to hear from you. You can learn how we set our budget, find out more about our proposals and have your say by completing our budget survey on our pages about planning the council's budget.

You can also try setting a budget yourself with our budget simulator.