Money, contracts and assets
Revenue pays for running services each year; capital pays for things that last, like buildings and sea defences. They are separate budgets.
Where £100 of service spending goes
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.
Total £256.5m · Portsmouth City Council — Budget & Council Tax 2026/27 and Medium-Term Budget Forecast, Full Council · Share this
Reserves
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.
Minimum balance set by the finance director: £12.0m (was £7.0m).
Audit
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.
| Year | Auditor's opinion | Weakness reported |
|---|---|---|
| 2021/22 | Unqualified | None |
| 2022/23 | Disclaimed | None reported |
| 2023/24 | Disclaimed | None |
| 2024/25 | Qualified | One — governance |
Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP
Contracts
Portsmouth City Council holds £414.6m a year in contracts. £71.8m of it — 17.3% — is with businesses registered in the city. £238.6m, well over half, goes to suppliers registered elsewhere in the UK.
The headline 17.3% is flattered by one company. Ensign Highways is Portsmouth-registered and holds the highways PFI — £25.3m of the £71.8m local total. Strip that single contract, locked until 2032, and local share falls to roughly 11%. The real finding is construction: £147.1m a year, the largest category by far, with only 10.3% going to Portsmouth-registered firms on work physically done in the city. That is about £132m a year leaving Portsmouth on buildings inside it.
Contracts reaching their current expiry date, by annual value. £212m a year — roughly half the council's contracted spend — reaches expiry before April 2028, and a further £142m falls in 2029. The March 2026 reorganisation decision would have moved the 2029 decisions to a new South East unitary; it was withdrawn on 7 September 2026, so for now they remain Portsmouth's.
Contracts register as released 10 August 2026 (FOI2026/02585)
Property bought and sold
Portsmouth City Council has been buying property, not selling it. At least £16.8m of acquisitions since 2020 against £2.35m of recorded disposal receipts — and nearly all the buying is a single street.
Fifteen of the 38 disposals are leasehold enfranchisement claims, where a leaseholder exercises a statutory right to buy their freehold. Those are not the council choosing to sell. Strip them out and 23 discretionary disposals remain over six years, against 34 acquisitions. This is not an authority disposing of its estate.
Register as released 11 August 2026 (EIR2026/02586)