How we spend our budget
We spend around 1.8bn each year across council services. Here is an overview of the budgets across our services and a snapshot of where the money is spent.
| Services | Gross budget 2026/27 |
| Children, Young People and Education | £777,122,146 |
| Adult Services and Health | £479,563,957 |
| Neighbourhoods | £230,374,210 |
| Finance and Resources | £42,377,452 |
| Housing Benefit (amount provided by Central Government) | £179,592,100 |
| City Development | £47,612,316 |
| Strategy and Change | £41,025, 304 |
| City Law and Governance | £13,839,106 |
| Corporate Management | £65,289,421 |
| Total | £1,876,796,011 |
The following figures are a snapshot of how we spend some of the money and does not include all services.
Adult social care: £324m
8,070 clients supported, including:
- 1,891 residential and nursing care,
- 2,528 homecare,
- 1,937 supported living and
- 1,232 in receipt of direct payments.
Children's social care: £122m
1,311 looked after children, including:
- 125 in residential care with average cost of £6,318 per week
- 340 in independent foster care
- 509 with Liverpool carers
Homelessness services: £34m
- 1,700 households in temporary accommodation
School grants: £275m
- Dedicated school grants for Liverpool maintained schools funding 43,000 school places
High needs funding: £103m
- High needs funding supporting some of our most vulnerable children to access education and learning.
Early years provision: £75m
- Funding early years provision to roll out the expanded educational entitlement for 2-year olds and increase rates paid to all providers.
Street cleansing: £15m
- Cleaning 1,000 kilometres of highways
Waste collection: £13m
- Collecting waste from 250,000 households (14.4m collections per year)
Street lighting: £1m revenue and £5m capital
- Maintaining and replacing over 44,000 street lights
Council Tax reduction scheme: £73m
- Supporting 60,600 residents
Household support fund: £12m
Support to economically vulnerable residents, for example:
- 23,000 households provided with supermarket vouchers for families with children in receipt of free school meals
- £2m help with energy costs for people of pensionable age and those living with a disability
- £1.2m was also distributed by Feeding Liverpool to community food groups across the city
Citizen support scheme: £3m
- Supporting people in crisis with food and necessities and household essentials