Financial Strategy
For well over a decade the Council has faced significant financial challenges due to year-on-year underinvestment by national governments. To try and cope with this we have saved £65million since 2010, protecting frontline services as much as possible.
However, next year, the Council will once again not receive enough Government funding to be able to fund all our services. Therefore, consideration will have to be given to which services we should prioritise spending on and we are seeking the input of Gwynedd residents to assist us.
This is a report from Cyngor Gwynedd which summarises the public's opinion on spending priorities for the financial year 2025–2026. Here are the main points of the report:
Summary of the results
- Number of responses: 627
- Type of respondents:
- 94.4% as individuals
- 0.8% on behalf or organisations
- 0.3% on behalf of local councils
- 3.8% as “others”
The top 5 Preferred Services
- Education (primary and secondary schools) – 55.8%
- Adult Social Services – 47.2%
- Highways – 37.5%
- Children's Social Services – 37.3%
- Housing (social housing, housing schemes for local people) – 34.0%
Key comments from respondents
- 47.4% of respondents who left comments.
- Main areas where comments were received:
- Health and social services
- Education, especially early years
- Social housing, better housing for local people, community housing
- Economic growth, jobs and good employment locally
- Less councillors and managers
️ Impact on the Welsh language (if cutting expenditure)
- 41.3% believe cuts would have a negative impact
- 38.4% believe there would be no impact
- 18.6% believe there would be a positive impact
Impact on Socio-economic disadvantaged people (if cutting expenditure)
- 64.9% believe cuts would have a negative impact
- 15.3% believe there would be no impact
- 17.5% believe there would be a positive impact
Profile of Respondents
- Sex: 58.1% female, 32.4% male
- Age: majority aged 35–74 old
- Disability: 2.2% consider themselves disabled
- Welsh Skills:
- 47.9% fluent
- 13.4% can but not confidently
- 11.6% learning