Birmingham’s Budget

Birmingham City Council’s corporate consultation for the 2012/13 budget has now ended. Thank you to everyone who has taken part.

Please note that directorate consultation may still be ongoing.

Draft Council Business Plan and Budget 2012+

Following the corporate consultation, the council has produced the draft Council Business Plan and Budget 2012+, which is below. Part Two of the document gives feedback and analysis of the consultation and includes a section on the key issues raised and the council's response.

The Business Plan and Budget will be presented to full council on 28 February for formal approval.

Budget Views Consultation

The corporate consultation ran from 12 October 2011 until the 8 January 2012. The council received around 3,000 responses from the public by using a range of consultation methods including;

• An on-line survey
• Eight public meetings in different venues across the city
• A survey of the People’s Panel
• Focus groups and workshops with the People’s Panel
• Young people’s discussion groups
• A number of ‘web-chats’ – online question and answer sessions – with the Council’s Chief Executive
• Opportunities to send in comments via email, text and letter
• Meetings with a variety of forums and user groups including learning disabled and disabled.
• Meetings with partner organisations
• Roadshows and meetings with staff

The council has gathered information from a range of groups as a result of the public meetings, focus groups and disability and minority group meetings. These consultations allowed people to express their concerns about specific proposals and describe what they felt the impact would be.

The final budget consultation report, which is available to download below, captures the concerns of everyone who contributed. This includes the detailed analysis on the corporate public consultation with results from the online survey, the reports from the People’s Panel postal survey, budget forum and focus groups.

Also included below are reports from the People's Panel Focus Groups and Workshop

Later in the year, the council will be publishing its Business Plan, which will include details of how it is responding to consultation comments.

What happens next?

All of the views expressed and the feedback from the surveys and consultation events have been presented to the council’s cabinet members to help them in formulating their proposals. The views expressed will be considered by elected members and they will use this information to help them decide how Birmingham’s budget should be spent in the next financial year. The budget will be discussed at the council meeting at the end of February.

More Information

Information about the budget consultation including press releases, videos from the chief executive and Councillor Randal Brew (cabinet member for finance) and a blog from the chief executive are available at Birmingham Newsroom.

Your comments and views

All of the comments and views that the council received have been posted on this website as part of the council's commitment to transparency.

The comments and letters are available for download here.

Notes from the community forums, which were held as part of the consultation process, are available here.

The consultation proposals and other useful documents are available here for information and reference only as the corporate consultation has now closed.