Lancashire County Council is encouraging people to create their own council budget with the launch of an online calculator.
The online budget calculator will let people see the impact of reducing or increasing funding to service areas, and hopefully understand the challenges facing the local authority at the moment, People can also leave comments and suggestions for the council, which it will take into account when setting the real budget.
The council needs to make savings of £300m over the next four years, on top of the £222m already saved over the current three-year budget.
David Borrow, deputy leader of the council and finance portfolio holder, said: ‘Setting the budget is extremely challenging as we have to balance competing demands and requirements in the face of a very difficult financial settlement. The budget calculator allows people to experience some of this for themselves.
’It's important that the public knows the scale of the challenge we're facing. We have to save £300m from 2014 to 2018, which is more than a third of the county council's current budget. This is due to further cuts in funding from government, increasing costs and rising demand for services.
’By taking a longer term view, we believe that we can place a greater focus on ways of preventing cost increases, such as preventative measures and early intervention.’
