city budget
The council is seeking views from city's residents on next year’s finances with an online ‘budget simulator’.The exercise is part of a public consultation to survey people’s views and to increase understanding of how the council spends its money and the difficult decisions ahead to balance the budget in a time of financial constraint.

The interactive budget simulator gives you the chance to tell the council how they’d like spending prioritised across seven themes. You can increase, decrease or make no changes to each service to try to get the budget to balance. The simulator works with the budget for the council’s day-to-day running costs, but not capital investment, from which you can allocate spending for a variety of areas, including housing, children’s services, adult social care and recycling and refuse.

The completed budget responses will help inform all councillors when they set the final budget at Full Council on 27th February next year. The administration’s proposals will be set out at Cabinet on 8 December and will be followed by further consultation and scrutiny. Unions along with the community and voluntary sector are also being involved in ‘round table’ discussions on the budget, to which all political parties are being invited.

Go to www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/budget to have a go - it also works on smartphones. People without the internet can access the simulator at their local library where Council Connect volunteers will be on hand to help.

Residents can also join in the budget discussions on twitter by using the #bhbudget hashtag.