Spending on resurfacing Bucks’ roads looks set to increase to £15 million, according to this year’s county council budget – the first with no financial help from a Government grant. 

Bucks County Council’s cabinet agreed to recommend a budget for day-to-day spending of £336 million and capital spending of £122.6 million on Monday (February 12). 

The county council has seen Government support decline from nearly £61 million five years ago to £8 million this year. 

Along with Dorset, Bucks will become the first county council to receive nothing at all.

The budget includes a £26.7 million investment in highways – with spending of resurfacing works increasing from £10 million to £15 million. 

In a bid to provide enough school places for a county where the population is expected to grow by 95,000 in the next 20 years, £36.6 million has been allocated. 

Cabinet members, who were subjected to three days of rigorous questioning over council finances by the Budget Scrutiny Select Committee in January, agreed a 2.99 per cent increase in standard council tax.

They also agreed to implement the Government proposal for a three per cent social care precept, and welcomed the Government’s one-year-only grant of £1 million, which will be spent on social care transformation.

This would mean an increase of £1.40 a week for a band D home.

Despite the increase, there is still a funding gap of £13.4 million, which the council hopes to meet by making savings and bringing in extra money. 

It includes £9.8 million in extra pressure on services for vulnerable people across the county -children’s services and adult social care.

The extra three per cent adult social care precept will provide around £7.6 million of the shortfall.

Council leader Martin Tett said: “We, along with every other county council, are facing severe cost pressures in adult social care and children’s services.

“These pressures are forcing us to increase council tax - something I would really not wish to do, but we just can’t avoid it.

“It’s vitally important that the Government sticks to its deadline and brings forward proposals on how social care will be funded, otherwise counties across the county will be under ever-increasing financial risk.”