Message from our Chief Executive: Glasgow City Council budget 2025/26

Dear colleagues

Tomorrow (Thursday 20 February), Glasgow City Council will debate its budget for 2025/26 at a Full Council meeting. You may hear more about this in the media in the coming days and weeks.

At the meeting, the city’s political groups will consider proposals and councillors will approve the council’s budget for the operational year ahead.

It’s important to remember this is in the context of Glasgow City Council having already set a three-year budget in the last financial year (2023/24), which established spending plans across the Council Family for 2024-27.

As part of that process, Glasgow Life was asked to propose savings, with the council approving £9.8m in reductions that we will deliver across this period, covering 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27. You can read my previous update on this here: Message from our Chief Executive: Glasgow City Council budget update [Friday 16 February 2024].

However, because local authorities receive their financial settlement from the Scottish Government annually, the council must approve a balanced budget each year, which includes setting Council Tax.

How the council prioritises the allocation of its budget is important for Glasgow Life. As our core funder, Glasgow City Council provides us with a service fee to operate venues and deliver programmes and services on their behalf. Our service fee for 2024/25 is £82.3m, which is 72% of our total budget.

Ensuring Glasgow Life’s long-term financial sustainability remains central to our strategic priorities, and we have made strong progress since setting a balanced budget last March, thanks to diligent work and careful planning by teams across our charity. I am confident that by 2026/27, 80% of our required savings (£7.9m) will come from increased income, with the remaining 20% (£1.9m) achieved through reducing our costs.

I will update you following tomorrow’s Full Council meeting if there are any decisions that affect Glasgow Life.

Best regards

Susan

Susan Deighan

Chief Executive