Big Conversation 2025-26: Your ideas
Stirling Council is committed to listening to the views, concerns, and aspirations of its communities and everyone in them to help inform next year’s budget decisions.
This ‘Big Conversation’ puts residents, communities and other groups at the heart of our budget planning. We want to hear your views on your priorities, needs, and the services you value the most, so that we can plan for long-term financial stability and secure the delivery of essential services to residents for years to come.
This year there are two stages for you to get involved in.
In this stage, we want to know what you think the council has done well recently, and where it could improve.
During the second stage (in January and February) we'll ask for your responses to more detailed proposals on ways to save and raise money.
The feedback you provide will shape the proposals that are presented to Councillors, and will be reported to Councillors when they are making decisions on the final budget. We will also share the feedback we received on this page at the end of the process.
By taking part, you're helping us to make sure that we deliver the right things for people across the whole Stirling Council area within the budget we have available.
If you have any difficulty accessing the survey, or have further questions, please email us at insights@stirling.gov.uk.
The graphic above shows how much of our day-to-day ('revenue') budget is spent on each of our services.
87% of the budget is spent on front-line services, with the remaining 13% funding corporate and business support costs, including public buildings, digital services, and finance services.
The chart on the right shows this breakdown in more detail.
Funding
Out of our total revenue budget of £319.1 million, £60.1 million, or 19%, comes from council tax. This list on the right shows where that portion of the budget is spent.
The council is in an unprecedented financial position due to external funding pressures, rising costs and inflation, and increasing demand for services.
All Scottish councils receive two types of funding: revenue funding is mainly used to pay for daily operations (like education, social services, waste collection, salaries, and maintenance). Capital funding is used to pay for projects, infrastructure, and new assets (like new paths, improvements roads and bridges, new buildings and schools, and projects like the Forthside film studio). This budget consultation is about how we spend the revenue funding.
In 2024-25, the overall settlement for local government was 1.9% higher in real terms than in 2013-14. In comparison, the amount councils spend on employment (which makes up around 70% of local government revenue spending) increased by 22% over the last 10 years.
The amount of capital funding we received in 2024-25 was the lowest since 2013-14, despite local government in Scotland expecting to have more capital costs than in previous years. This means that many councils increased their borrowing to fund capital projects.
Although inflation on consumer goods has been coming down, inflation on services - which make up a large proportion of what we spend on - has stayed high.
As well as higher costs, the demographic changes are resulting in an ageing population who need more social care services, and more but smaller households, leading to increased spend.
Local authorities across Scotland are facing financial challenges that are similar to, or worse than, those we face at Stirling Council.
The council has a legal obligation to set a balanced budget for the next financial year so it can continue to protect the most vulnerable and deliver on its key priorities.
Phases
Feedback: The Budget for 2025/26
We read and analysed the comments you provided, and have produced a report on what we found which was shared with officers and elected members. You can read the report by clicking the link below.