Eynsham Parish Council News

Our Budget for 2025/26 27 Jan 2025 Find out more about the Budget for the next financial year

Just before Christmas we finalised the Parish Council Budget for FY 2025/26. As will be expected, the cost to residents will rise, but we’ve made every effort to minimise the increase by reducing our costs and seeking alternative funding (e.g. applying for grants) for our projects where possible.

What’s the cost?

Our total budget will be £394,450, with a precept request to the District Council of £322,177 – we make up the difference ourselves (e.g. via grants or in income from hiring fees). Residents living in a ‘band D’ property (check yours online) will pay £145.26 for the year, a 17.3% increase on last year’s £123.84, or 41p more each week. We appreciate this is the third year in a row that residents have faced a rise, but it is a slightly lower ‘step up’ than last year, when it rose 22.8%. 

Why is it rising?

We’re facing the same, continuous increase in energy costs as residents, as well as the rise in staff costs due to the changes in National Insurance contributions. In FY 23/24 we regained responsibility for the Village Hall, which costs us more than the income from hiring fees. There has also been an increase in tax-exempt households due to low incomes in our Parish. Added to this, Eynsham generally has more facilities to maintain than other villages, which is costly. 

The Parish Council is working hard to be more efficient and make our money go further. For example, we’ve hired a Maintenance Operative to handle tasks in-house rather than paying for contractors. That said, we won’t ever cut back on maintaining our community facilities, services and green spaces. These are community assets, valuable to us all, to enjoy today and preserve for tomorrow. 

New projects

There are various projects planned for the coming year, despite the tight budget. We will continue making critical upgrades to our play area equipment as well as to the Village Hall facilities. We’re also planning to create a local Art Trail using some grant money, which will be really exciting. This will involve local artists and members of the community and we’ll share more details on this soon.

Join us?

We could reduce our costs further if we had a full remit of Councillors. If you’re interested, feel free to attend a monthly meeting (these are on Tuesday evenings once a month – check the meetings calendar for the next one) to see what we do. Email us via epc.comms@eynsham-pc.gov.uk and we can arrange for our Chair Ross to have a chat with you and answer any questions you may have. It’s an enjoyable, satisfying and interesting role to take on, suitable to anyone with a desire to have a positive impact on Eynsham and our community. 

Find out more

We’ll be sharing more information about the Budget at our Annual Parish Meeting on Tuesday 4 March (7.30pm in the Village Hall). All are welcome to attend the evening, which will involve a short meeting before an informal mingling session, with lots of organisations sharing displays and information and their activities.

If residents have immediate concerns, please email us via epc.comms@eynsham-pc.gov.uk and we will help you as best we can.

 

Gallery

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