Blackpool is a town of immense pride, resilience, and potential.
We are in a privileged position in this chamber, being tasked with its stewardship and helping to guide its future direction.
After many years of successive, compound funding reductions across all public services, and despite our best efforts to protect them, our community has had to suffer cuts to preventative and early help services. As many of us predicted, as a result we have seen significant and sustained increases in the level and complexity of needs that our most vulnerable people, adults, families and children have – many of whom then need expensive, statutory support. It is a story that is retold in working class towns and cities up and down the country – especially in coastal communities like ours.
We are seeing increasing need in children’s services, adult social care, school travel. At the same time, the cost to the tax payer of delivering those services continues to climb sharply. The challenge before us is clear: rebuild the preventative, supportive early help and support that we know makes our communities safer and more secure – more resilient to the challenges of day to day life and less exposed to the need for statutory services, all the while protecting those services that we know our residents want and need. We need to do this while maintaining fiscal responsibility and never shying away from the investment that is needed in the regeneration our town that its residents and businesses deserve and are working so hard to achieve.
Sadly, there remains much fragility in our local economy, with many businesses struggling and low pay and insecure employment all too prevalent for the people of Blackpool. My colleagues and I had high hopes that the government would deliver a truly ‘fair’ funding review – one that would put towns like Blackpool back in the budget position that we should be in, that our community deserves. Sadly, changes to the formula that has been used by government following consultation has delivered something that falls short of what we would consider real fairness – and although we have seen some additional funding made available, it does not come close to what we need to support what Blackpool needs. We cannot let this funding challenge stop us rebuilding the support and opportunities that Blackpool needs.
This is why it is vital that we are bold in our action and in our budget. This budget invests: We are investing in people, in services, in homes and in the economy.
This does mean that we need to increase council tax and rents. While we wish this wasn’t necessary, the bold action we need to take means that we need to consider the long term good of the town, rather than short term political gains.
Blackpool currently has the lowest average council tax in Lancashire, at £1,104. We will always as a council ensure that there is support available for those in real need and have exemptions for many residents as we have widened the criteria for the council tax reduction scheme to benefit as many people as possible who may be struggling. Over 30,000 homes already get a reduction of some form, whether it is because they are vulnerable, on a low income, are carers or live alone. If you think you are eligible for a discount, please get in touch.
When we talk about investment, we mean investing in protecting the most vulnerable, providing quality affordable housing, helping our young people find work, paying the Real Living Wage across all services, including social care, regenerating the town centre, creating jobs at the Enterprise Zone and investing in the core services that our community tells us are most important to them.
Over the last few years we have invested in more children’s social workers, so we can make sure caseloads are manageable, so our staff can do quality work, keep our children safe and support children to stay with their families whenever possible.
We have also invested in our fostering service, introducing the Mockingbird service, to provide dedicated support to our foster carers when there are challenges. We have invested jointly with our neighbours in Lancashire, Blackburn and Cumbria to boost our marketing efforts to increase the amount of potential foster carers that we can identify.
Along with this, our biggest investment in children’s services has been in our Family Hubs, with an additional £4m invested over three years, to support our parents and help give our children the best start in life. Our Family Hubs have reached over 8,600 families since 2023.
This investment is transforming outcomes for our children; as a result, we have seen a reduction in the referral rate for children in Blackpool into statutory services by more than 26% over the past 5 years.
We are seeing an increase in the number of people who are seeking our support in adult social care too. This is both the number of people who need our help and the complexity of the issues they face, many related to poor health. There is no doubt in my mind that the link to the cost of living, and to the impact of poor housing quality, is incredibly strong for our adult social care demand. We are investing in extra capacity in our social work teams and our support workers, to give them the time and infrastructure to better help those in need.
Currently we have more people who are admitted directly to residential care than our peers, so we are focusing our efforts on building greater independence and resilience in our residents and our community. We have had some notable success in keeping people with higher needs in their own homes through the use of new equipment. We are taking a partnership approach to the transformation that adult social care needs, with health, the third sector and our community, using a genuine coproduction ethos to our work.
We live in an environment where demand is high and resources are tight, so it is vital that every pound works as hard as possible. This is why we are not only investing in front line services, but also in new systems and technology in HR and finance, to make sure our back office services are more efficient and effective, aiding better decision making, getting better value for money and improving debt collection.
One of the most impactful areas of investment has been in housing. We have invested £124m over the last 10 years to deliver new social housing in Blackpool and to improve the condition of our existing housing stock. We are also proposing to invest a further £41m over the next 3 years.
We have delivered 418 new council homes, in Grange Park, Mereside and Queens Park. This year will see a new sheltered housing scheme open on Whitegate Drive and new council homes completed in Bispham. We are not just creating new homes, as vital as this is, we are improving the energy efficiency with £1m spent on council homes and about 300 private homes receiving support through the CHiL programme. We have also delivered 2400 new kitchens and bathrooms for our tenants, with 400 more to be completed in 2026/27.
Despite this, the overall quality of housing in Blackpool remains too poor – with too many people impacted by a lack of investment from private rented sector landlords – many of the worst of whom have never even been to Blackpool. The creation of My Blackpool Home 10 years ago has given us the ability to directly intervene in the private rented sector, where most of the biggest challenges in housing quality are seen. We have invested over £63m, with over 770 properties now in their portfolio. While regulation and enforcement will always form a key part of our arsenal in driving up quality standards, direct action is necessary if we are to transform our town. We plan to invest a further £50m over the next six years, to deliver more quality housing for our community.
Yet we know that building new homes alone will not solve the housing crisis in Blackpool. Too many of our streets are still scarred by long-term empty properties—homes that sit neglected, attracting crime, antisocial behaviour, and lowering confidence in entire neighbourhoods. Residents have told us repeatedly how deeply these derelict and abandoned homes affect their daily lives, their sense of safety, and their pride in their communities.
So tonight I am announcing the establishment of a new Empty Properties Task Force—a focused, multi-agency team that will take bold, proactive action on the worst offenders. This task force will target the properties and the landlords who have failed our town for far too long. It will combine enforcement with practical support, working street-by-street to bring homes back into use, invigorate neighbourhoods, and give people the quality housing environment they deserve.
This is not about punishing those who want to do the right thing; it is about tackling those who refuse. It is about standing up for residents who for years have been left to live with the consequences of neglect that is not their own. By bringing empty homes back into use, we are not just fixing buildings—we are strengthening communities.
Our number one ambition is to provide a quality, affordable home for everyone in Blackpool, building communities that our residents our proud to be part of. This is why the transformation of Revoe is so vital to us and the future of the town – the result of one of the first ‘masterplans’ developed with the community. In this first phase, we are talking about the removal of people’s homes and businesses, and we do not take this lightly – and those people and businesses will get the support they need. But this investment, and the way it will be delivered, is a once in a lifetime opportunity to introduce light, space and quality in to an area of Central Drive – which by its very name tells you how important it has been to Blackpool over the years – that desperately needs it. This intervention will deliver the catalyst for the kind of investment that the whole inner area needs to deliver better housing quality, availability and sustainability, cheek by jowl with the opportunities for businesses to deliver the kind of services that a strong, stable community needs.
And our community needs young people who feel proud of Blackpool, and as invested in its future as we are in theirs. Our young people need good access to a great education, and to great, engaging activities that help build that pride and sense of ownership. Not only have we delivered all the new facilities in our leisure centres and parks for everyone to enjoy, but also the new youth centre at Gorton Street and the revamped youth centre in Whiteholme. These facilities are operated by our partners in the third sector, with our youth partnership growing from strength to strength. This year we will be starting on site in Revoe, with a sports village being created next to the football ground and Central Drive, in partnership with Blackpool FC and BFC Community Trust. This will be a wonderful facility for the community and may even help grow the next generation of stars to grace the turf at Bloomfield Road.
In 2024 we launched the Active Blackpool brand, bringing together our Leisure facilities and Communities teams. Our goal was to increase the number of people engaged in fitness activities, so we reduced the price of memberships and introduced a defined exercise referral pathway. These interventions have seen an exponential increase in memberships, growing from just over 3000 to nearly 6500, an over 110% increase!
This includes concessionary membership numbers increasing from 1500 to over 3400, genuinely accessible for all. Total visits to our facilities have gone up from 1,829,000 to 4,108,000, an increase of 124%. Truly remarkable.
We have been able to reinvest in our facilities on the back of this success, with a complete overhaul of the gym and active wellbeing suite at Moor Park.
The social impact on this growth in activity could be measured in the millions of pounds, but the most important testimony comes from the people themselves, who describe it as “life changing”.
Stanley Park celebrates its centenary this year and it continues to be one of the best parks in the country, we are investing £500,000 this year as part of the centenary celebrations. (some details on where money going). But we are not only focussed on Stanley Park, this year saw a record number of our parks getting Green Flag awards with 7 achieving the standard, we are improving the facilities in many of our parks and will continue to do so. Our parks are something to be proud of and we celebrate the great partnership we have between our excellent parks team and all of our friends groups.
We know that many in our community have been struggling financially, so we have targeted our energy at things that can make a real difference. In this budget, we have a Crisis and Resilience Fund budget of £3.8m. We have helped 6,000 families over the last year who’s children are on free school meals during the summer, our holiday activity fund also provided activities for our children in the school holidays. We continue to provide our free breakfast scheme in all our primary schools, and provided nearly £500,000 in grants to third sector partners, helping them support over 58,000 residents. Our Advice Team have also helped residents manage their finances, supporting unmanageable debt write-off and benefit and pension claims, amounting to over £2m. I would say that the single most important thing we have done to support low paid workers, is through being a Real Living Wage Council. Not only does the council pay the RLW, but our companies do and so do our commissioned service providers. This has most impact in adult social care, over 4,300 staff who work in residential or home care receive up to an extra £1.24 per hour as a result. This costs the council an extra £4m per year, but is worth every penny, paying a fair wage to those who look after our most vulnerable residents, but helping improve the attractiveness of the industry, reducing turnover and leading to better quality care.
The number one issue raised with us on the doorstep is roads. We have spent millions over the last few years in improving the quality of our roads, but there remains much we want to do. We are investing £15m as part of the Town Centre Access Scheme, this will help all the new commuters that are coming into the town centre, as well as those who need to traverse the town centre. Blackpool wasn’t designed for cars, but for trams, trains and public transport, so are making changes that make it work better for everyone. We have already invested £3.3m in improving road surfaces this year, this delivers more than 57,500 square metres of resurfacing and we have a further £3.5m programmed to start.
The other main services that people always mention are waste collection and street cleansing. Creating Enveco has helped us develop more focussed and innovative approaches to keeping our streets clean, improved recycling rates and invest in ways to reduce our negative impact on the environment. Last year we had the second highest recycling rate in Lancashire, this year we are delivering on the national requirement for weekly collection of food waste and introducing improved recycling facilities for residents, including piloting new approaches for our most densely populated areas, where there isn’t room for wheeled bins. We all want to do the most we can to help in the battle against climate change, but we need to make it as easy as possible for our residents to do the right thing and we are investing to deliver that.
One of the things that make Blackpool “Blackpool” is our promenade, but it isn’t just a place for a nice walk, an ice cream and a suntan. Our seafront protects against bad weather and rising sea levels. We have invested many millions over years to make sure our sea defences are strong. In our capital programme you will see a further investment across our coastline of over £150m, from Anchorsholme to Starr Gate, protecting over 12,500 homes and 3,000 businesses, and making sure our coastline is accessible to all. For the first time we will see rock groynes form part of our sea defences, this is to make sure that our golden sands stay here and don’t make the journey up the coast. These new features will help use the natural coast defence of the sand stay in place and we are also exploring ways to make the groynes part of new attractions and light shows too. Just as with our headlands and comedy carpet, not just infrastructure, showbiz infrastructure!
We want to make Blackpool a place that our young people aspire to be part of and make their future in. Anyone I meet that hasn’t been to Blackpool town centre in a few years can hardly believe the transformation. The best Holiday Inn in the country, a new tram terminus, a DWP Hub for 3000 workers, all delivered, triggered by the catalytic developments of Bickerstaffe House and the Sainsbury’s. Now the MoD building well on the way bringing another 1000 worker to the centre and over 300 more to the first floor of Bickerstaffe from NHS Pensions. A real public sector hub, as promised. The Multiversity will start on site this year bringing 3000 students to the centre, a vibrant mix that any city would be proud of. The Enterprise Zone has already delivered 2700 jobs, but the improved infrastructure with the new access road and the transatlantic cable will bring more businesses to Blackpool and will help foster Silicon Sands. We will help deliver another 1000 jobs over the next three years, with the potential of Silicon Sands to deliver a further 14000 jobs in the long term. Transformational for Blackpool and the lives of our children.
Blackpool Central is another development that can transform, in this case the visitor economy, by clearing the site of the 1960s monstrosities court and police buildings, we are now marketing the site, looking for developers who can offer an offer something new and exciting for our visitors that will draw more people to support our economy and our businesses.
One of the things that locals and visitors are rightly proud of in Blackpool, is our heritage. Since we acquired the Tower and the Winter Gardens, we have invested £100m. We have been investing in the infrastructure, like steel and roofs, and in the front of house like in the magnificent Tower Ballroom. We have also added our generation’s contribution to the Winter Gardens, with the new Conference Centre. There is always more to do when you have Victorian assets of the scale we do, but we place a high priority on them. While it is wonderful to see the glorious past in Showtown, we also want to enjoy these assets in all their glory, as we can with the ballrooms, theatres and circus. We will be investing in making sure more of our historic trams are out on the promenade for our residents and visitors to enjoy.
Our cultural offer continues to expand, reaching all sections of the population locally and nationally. Showtown has won many awards over this last year and the range of quality entertainment being offered at the Opera House and the Grand Theatre continues to impress. We have extended the Illuminations to the Christmas holidays and Lightpool, our festival of light goes from strength to strength. This year, on top of many contemporary exhibitions, we will see one of Monet’s most celebrated pictures grace the walls of the Grundy Art Gallery. The Grundy isn’t just about visiting art and artists, they work with many community organisations and schools to help foster the artists of tomorrow. One of the most impressive things I have seen this year is the partnership with our Langdale Day Service, where an initial small art group for service users has led not just to these new artists exhibiting in the Grundy, but as far afield as London and New York. Disability is no barrier where talent is encouraged and allowed to flourish.
Libraries in many parts of the country have suffered but we kept all ours open and have invested in them to make them real community hubs. Last year 385,000 people came through the doors and we issued over 189,000 physical and digital items. Our library service goes well beyond books, delivering a huge number of events and activities. Such as early years, music, wellbeing sessions, park activities, in total there were over 2,100 events, with nearly 30,000 attendees.
I have already mentioned the fragile state of the national economy, so it is vital that we invest in supporting our local businesses, whether that is as new start-ups or helping them grow. We have two new business academies to provide support and in the last year we have worked with 115 start-ups and pre-starts. We also supported 72 growth businesses. Through our Net Zero Academy, we have supported over 300 low carbon investments, with many in the hospitality sector, not only is this saving businesses money, but we estimate that 40 tonnes of carbon will be saved too.
We have also expanded our business centre capacity. We have recently seen the completion and opening of the Robinson, formerly Stanley Buildings. Not only is this breathing new life into one of our historic buildings (Civic Trust award winning) but we are providing 44 new contemporary offices, plus co-working space and meeting rooms. 18 new shop fronts have also been installed. This development adds to our existing offer at the Enterprise Centre, FYC and 81 Central.
While additional funding from the government is welcome, it does not yet deliver the necessary injection of resources needed. We will supplement their investment with a prudent plan to use non-operational asset disposals to fund vital investment in key services. This is no ‘selling of the family silver’ but utilising our assets to the long term benefit of our town and our people.
We have not stood still. We have pursued regeneration with determination. We have invested in our town, our heritage, our housing, and our future. We have brought forward major redevelopment projects, improved public spaces, supported local businesses, and worked to create jobs and opportunity.
We have seen new confidence in our town. We have seen long-awaited investment become reality. This is testimony to our vision, we have been persistent and determined, we have built partnerships across the country, with governments of any political persuasion, with the business community, with the rest of the public sector, with the third sector, never losing sight of our goal to make Blackpool a place that our children can flourish in.
But regeneration alone does not solve every problem.
We know too many residents still struggle with poverty, inequality, and poor health. We know that deprivation, housing quality, and life chances remain defining challenges. We know that the demand for council services reflects real hardship in people’s lives.
This budget, therefore, is not just a financial document it is a statement of principles and priorities.
It protects our most vulnerable.
It continues investment in regeneration and growth.
It supports our ambitions for cleaner streets, safer communities, and stronger neighbourhoods.
We have taken measured, responsible risks when they are in the long-term interests of our town.
We will not gamble with public finances—but neither will we be paralysed by caution.
Our ambition for Blackpool is unapologetically bold:
A thriving, year-round economy.
Quality homes and stronger communities.
Better health and life chances.
Opportunities for our young people.
Pride in our heritage and environment.
This budget keeps us on that path.
Standing still is not an option. Losing belief in our town is not an option.
Blackpool has always been defined by its spirit—creative, determined, and unafraid to reinvent itself.
Tonight, with this budget, we honour that spirit.
We face the challenges with realism.
We build on our progress with confidence.
And we move forward with ambition.