Hampshire County Council Future Services Consultation

Your views count. Hampshire County Council is running a public consultation to understand people’s views across Hampshire on options to change and reduce some local services and help the Authority address a £132 million budget shortfall faced by April 2025.

The consultation aims to help inform the County Council’s efforts to focus key support to the most vulnerable people in Hampshire in future while meeting its legal duty to deliver a balanced budget in 2025/26.

The consultation closes on 31 March 2024.

The options within the consultation include proposals to change the following services:

Adult social care charges: Proposals to change the way contributions towards non-residential social care costs are calculated

Adult social care grant schemes: To withdraw funding for three Adult Social Care grant programmes that assist voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations in Hampshire, namely the Council for Voluntary Services Infrastructure Grant, the Citizens Advice Infrastructure Grant and the Local Solutions Grant.

Competitive (one-off) grant schemes: To withdraw three competitive grant schemes which provide one-off grants to a range of community groups and organisations; namely the Leader’s Community Grants, the Rural Communities Fund (including country shows) and the Parish and Town Council Investment Fund.

Hampshire Cultural Trust grant: To reduce the amount of grant given to Hampshire Cultural Trust to manage and deliver arts and museums services.

Highways maintenance: To reduce planned highways maintenance activities, incorporating larger-scale structural repairs, surface treatments on roads, and drainage improvements.

Highways winter service: To comprehensively review and revise the criteria used to determine which roads should be treated as part of the Priority One network.

Homelessness Support Services: To stop funding services that the County Council does not have a legal requirement to provide.

Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs): To provide a sustainable, cost-effective and fit for purpose Household Waste Recycling service within a reduced budget.

Library stock: To reduce how much is spent on new library stock, such as books and digital resources, each year.

Passenger transport: To reduce the amount of money spent on passenger transport by withdrawing all remaining funding that the County Council is not legally required to provide.

Rural countryside parking: To introduce car parking charges at rural countryside car parks (such as nature reserves and conservation sites) that the County Council manages, where it is expected that doing so would be commercially viable.

School Crossing Patrols: To review the School Crossing Patrols (SCP) service by looking at each SCP site to decide if alternative safety measures exist or could be put in place that would enable the SCP to be safely withdrawn or be funded by other organisations.

Street lighting: To reduce the brightness of streetlights further and to extend the periods that streetlights are switched off during the night (by 2 hours) – where it is considered safe and appropriate to do so.

Complete the consultation online. HCC would still like to hear from as many people in Hampshire as possible – from residents, to businesses, schools, universities, community and voluntary groups, to help them understand and consider the potential impact of any changes proposed.

Feedback can be provided by using the consultation Response Form, available online via the consultation webpage: www.hants.gov.uk/future-services-consultation

Responses can also be emailed directly to Hampshire County Council via: insight@hants.gov.uk or write to Freepost HAMPSHIRE. (Please also write PandO, IEU, FM09 on the back of the envelope).

The responses submitted through this consultation will be collated and used to shape final savings proposals that will be considered by the County Council’s Cabinet later this year.