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The Service

Corporate Planning Process

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Financial resources

What we spend and where the money comes from

By 15 February each year the Authority must, after consulting with representatives from the business, residents and taxpayers communities set its revenue budget for the forthcoming financial year (April to March).

To meet the cost of providing the service we receive grant funding from central government known as Formula Spending Share (FSS), Business Rates (NNDR) with the difference being made up from council tax. The Authority is mindful in setting its budget that any increases in spending requirements has a direct effect on the level of the council tax.

The Authority recognises, however, that 'cost per head of population' comparisons show that Hampshire is consistently one of the lowest spending fire authorities in the country, and that expenditure on fire and rescue services amounts to less than 5% of total local government expenditure. Full comparisons can be found in Performance Indicators (BV 150).

For 2008/09 the Authority has been able to set a budget of £64.6m, an increase of 3.85% over the previous year. The increase is mainly to cover the cost of inflation and nationally negotiated pay settlements. We are pleased that for the fourth year running we have been able to keep the increase in Council Tax in line with the increase in the state pension.

Our plans for efficiency improvements

The Government expects all English Fire Authorities to make ongoing cashable efficiency gains totaling £110m or 5% of 2007/08 net expenditure by 2010/11. For Hampshire our target is £3.3m. This does not mean that budgets need to be cut, but that we need to look for opportunities to re-allocate resources towards areas of higher priority in our Fire and Rescue Service Plan.  We are on target to deliver £1m of cashable efficiency savings by the end of 2008/09.

Despite being one of the lowest spending fire authorities in the country (when measured per head of population (BV 150), we recognise this does not necessarily mean that we can claim to be efficient.

We are fully committed to improving efficiency in all that we do. Our external auditor has commented that, particularly through our continual reviews of fire cover, we are regarded as an authority that is prepared to challenge our existing policies and practices.

The programme of Best Value reviews is expected to result in many efficiency gains: some will be significant, others will be relatively small, but added together they are expected to demonstrate a major improvement in the utilisation of all resources.

In particular the challenges of the modernisation agenda for fire services will present opportunities for greater efficiency through collaborative working with other fire services and these are being actively pursued by our officers’ involvement in both regional and national groups working on procurement, regional control rooms, training, human resources and civil resilience.