Council & Money
Where Portsmouth City Council's money actually goes, where the pressure is building, and what its own finance officer and external auditors say about its position.
Revenue, not capital.Everything on this page is the council's day-to-day running budget — funded by council tax, business rates and government grant. Capital spending (building things, funded by borrowing and capital grant) is a separate budget and cannot be moved into revenue. A council can be building a leisure centre while struggling to fund social care; the two are not interchangeable.
£100 of council service spending
Almost 60p in every £1 of service spending goes on two things: children's services and adult social care. Everything else the council does — bins, streets, roads, parks, libraries, leisure, housing, climate — shares the remaining 40p.
Share of service spending, 2025/26 approved portfolio budgets. Excludes the “Leader” and Treasury Management lines, which carry investment income and are negative — including them would make these shares meaningless. Revenue spending only, not capital.
Social care is growing faster than the budget
Adult social care spending rose 64% between 2017/18 and 2025/26, from £45.4m to £74.3m. Children's services and education rose 62%, from £48.1m to £77.8m. Total net revenue spending rose 49% over the same period — so both are growing faster than the budget as a whole, squeezing everything else.
Read this carefully.Portsmouth renamed and restructured its portfolios in 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2024/25. The two social care lines are shown under the names actually published each year, and the pre-2021 children's figure combines the then-separate Children's Social Care and Education portfolios so it is comparable with the merged line that replaced them. Some other portfolios are genuinely not comparable across those breaks — Transport appears to fall in 2024/25, but the next year's report restates the same year £9.2m higher.
Band D council tax, up 42% in nine years
Portsmouth's own precept rose from £1,279 to £1,818 between 2017/18 and 2025/26.
Portsmouth City Council's own precept only — the bill also includes separate precepts for the Police and Crime Commissioner and for Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire. Band D rose 42% between 2017/18 and 2025/26. In seven of those nine years the increase was at or just below the referendum threshold, and a portion was the ring-fenced adult social care precept, shown separately.
Reserves flat, the floor rising
The balance has barely moved in nine years. The minimum allowed beneath it has been raised twice.
The working balance has been remarkably flat — around £20–22m for nine years. What has moved is the floor beneath it: the minimum the Director of Finance will allow has been raised twice, from £8m to £10m and now to £12m for 31 March 2027. The balance is not falling; the assessed risk against it is rising.
Portsmouth carries no accumulated SEND deficit — it has a surplus
Unlike many authorities, Portsmouth has no accumulated Dedicated Schools Grant deficit. Its carry-forward was a surplus of £11.5m at March 2024, £11.1m at March 2025 and £8.0m at March 2026 (draft). The absence of a "DSG Adjustment Account" in its unusable reserves independently corroborates this — that negative reserve is what every deficit authority must carry.
But it is turning. That is now changing. For the first time, the council is budgeting a DSG deficit of £4.5m in 2026/27. The surplus has fallen by £3.1m in a single year.
A statutory override currently keeps DSG deficits off councils' main budgets, but it ends on 31 March 2028 (Regulation 30L, Local Authorities (Capital Finance and Accounting) (England) Regulations 2003). Government has confirmed that in-year deficits from April 2028 become its responsibility, but has made no commitment to fund accumulated deficits existing at that date.
Portsmouth is not in the DfE's Safety Valve intervention programme — consistent with a council that has been in surplus. The Isle of Wight, a likely reorganisation partner, is.
The council's own assessment: "Sound"
The medium-term forecast improved sharply — the previous forecast was a £9m gap, now £3m, largely because the Fair Funding Review landed better than assumed. The council itself calls the forecast "finely balanced" and says it could vary by plus or minus £6m.
“The Council's financial health is currently sound, but future risks remain relating to inflation volatility, accelerating cost and demand for Care Services, SEND and Homelessness as well as the uncertainty arising from Local Government Reorganisation.”
— Director of Finance & Resources (Section 151 Officer), Budget 2026/27 report, Full Council, 24 February 2026
Portsmouth has never issued a Section 114 notice and its S151 officer has not warned that one may become necessary. The only references in the budget report are the standard statutory description of the power, and an observation about the national picture.
Two disclaimed opinions — but not about Portsmouth's finances
The 2022/23 and 2023/24 disclaimers were NOT a finding about Portsmouth's finances. They resulted from the national local-audit backstop: auditors did not have the resources to complete detailed procedures before a statutory cut-off, and disclaimed opinions across many councils. The 2024/25 qualification flows directly from those prior disclaimers leaving opening balances unverified.
The one significant weakness identified for 2024/25 is on GOVERNANCE, not financial sustainability: "Weaknesses in the quality and safety of council housing and the Council's arrangements to address this." It follows the council's own September 2024 self-referral to the Regulator of Social Housing and a January 2025 regulatory judgement grading Portsmouth C3 — "serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards". The regulator noted the council "has engaged constructively and acted transparently".
No significant weakness has been reported against the financial sustainability criterion in any year examined. No statutory recommendation, public interest report or advisory notice has been issued.