Welcome to Engage Aberdeenshire

At Aberdeenshire Council, we want to listen to communities, hear new ideas and take on board what people tell us.&nbsp;But we can only do that with your help! &nbsp;&nbsp;We are building a network of people across Aberdeenshire - including people from different towns, different backgrounds and different ages to give us as many views as possible. If you live in Aberdeenshire, we want to hear from you. &nbsp;&nbsp;To get involved, simply click on subscribe under &#39;Stay Informed&#39; and add your email address. We will only use your email address to let you know about current projects that are taking place and other ways you can get involved. We will never share your email address or use it for any other purpose. By subscribing, there is no commitment to take part or get involved - you can decide which projects are of interest to you. From transport and town centres to health care and housing - there is a wide range of topics for you to have your say on. And there will be opportunities to vote on how some money is spent. &nbsp;&nbsp;We will update this page regularly and let you know how your feedback has been used. Taking part really does make a difference to the decisions that are made in your community.&nbsp;To start us off, we would love to see your photos of summer in Aberdeenshire. To add your photo &nbsp; , click on &#39;Have your say&#39; below and add your favourite photos!

Find out how you can help Aberdeenshire decide

Aberdeenshire Decides!

Find out how your feedback is helping to shape our plans, policies and decisions

We asked, You said, We will

Aberdeenshire Health & Social Care Partnership Equality Outcomes 2024 - 2028: 2nd stage consultation 

No Mow Meadows

Community Wealth Building Strategy

Business Gateway Aberdeen City and Shire - Have your say

Quarries Customer Survey

Aboyne Bridge

Peterhead 2040

Youth, Adult and Learning in Communities

Macduff Marine Aquarium

Learning Estates 

Active Travel Aberdeenshire

Aberdeenshire Council's Housing Community

Local Development Plan 2027

Aberdeenshire Learning Community Partnership

Aberdeenshire Lived Experience Network - Join us!

Aberdeenshire Community Resilience Strategy

Buchan Community Planning Partnership

Health & Social Care Community Engagement and Participation

Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Service

Aberdeenshire Youth Music Initiative

The Old Council Garages, Alford

Developing Aberdeenshire Council Equality Outcomes 2025-2029

Trading Standards Car Project 2025

Banff and Buchan Food Growing Sites

K&M playpark upgrades

Playground Survey 2025

Engagement and Consultation Officer

Test: Fighting the Climate Crisis in Ferness

Engagement HQ Introduction & Training 

Be notified when consultations that interest you are due to start

Register for engagement alerts 

<h1 class="fr-text-bordered fr-text-spaced" style="text-align: left;">The survey is now closed. The final report is available <a href="https://engage.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/27313/widgets/83657/documents/51072" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here.</a>&nbsp;</h1>You will have seen lots of articles in the media about the difficult choices facing local authorities as we seek to balance our budgets whilst maintaining critical local services.&nbsp;We deliver 100s of local services &ndash; all running to support vibrant and prosperous communities, and helping those who need us most. You&rsquo;ll be aware of many of those services, like schools, waste, roads maintenance, planning, economic development, public transport, social work, benefits, social housing and sports and leisure. Others you may be aware of but not have to use yourself &ndash; but recognise that they are incredibly important to us as a society &ndash; like homelessness, community safety, environmental health and public protection.And, as a large organisation employing thousands of people, it is critical that we are supported by efficient processes and systems, with corporate services like finance, HR, IT and customer services ensuring we are doing business in the best and most effective way possible.With so many services valued and required by our residents, it is really difficult to decide what to cut or reduce. And with over two-thirds of our entire budget invested in education and care which is heavily legislated, the impact of cuts on the remaining services can be disproportionate.<h1 class="fr-text-bordered fr-text-spaced">Our finances</h1>In 2023/24 our revenue budget (for monthly expenditure like the day-to-day costs of running services, including staffing) was &pound;711m, with a capital budget (where we borrow to fund fixed assets like roads and buildings) of &pound;115m. <img src="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ehq-production-europe/a4b70ac14568c8e7ada962ae55c9c5c17d2e4ac7/original/1695743441/895fc5f20c922d5f500fd8487cf14028_Budget_Info_Graphic_1.png?1695743441" style="width: 533px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"> That sounds a lot but to put it into context, we provide services to around 262,000 people every day, covering many services. Our population is growing and ageing, which means services cost us more. We are impacted by rising inflation and cost of living crisis with more people requiring our help, and our costs are growing way beyond any increases we receive from Government or by raising Council Tax.The world is changing around us &ndash; how we interact with each other, shop, travel, work is all changing. And as a modern Council, we must change too. Our services are valued by residents and we will continue to support our communities in the best way possible. But change is inevitable. Our focus is on changing the way we deliver services, so we can continue to maintain the high standards you expect of us.We have to balance our books by being as efficient as we can be, by transforming the way we do business, and by making some difficult choices about changing, or indeed stopping, services. Over the last few years, we&rsquo;ve taken big steps to reducing central costs, in order to protect frontline services.There are large parts of our budget where we have limited ability to reduce services. For example, education and care make up around two-thirds of our entire budget, with school class sizes and free school meals agreed by Government for example. These are policies that aim to give the best education and support to children and young people, but means we have little flexibility to reduce the budgets in these areas. All this means that there will be disproportionate impacts across our remaining services which is where we have to look for the greatest savings.We know the decisions we make will impact our communities &ndash; so the purpose of this engagement exercise is to give you a voice in how we deliver our services in the future.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ehq-production-europe/7f94d38026351ada02215e91b640d8da375ee024/original/1695743579/c628958919cbbcc01676f60d83ddb71c_Budget_Info_Graphic_2.png?1695743579" style="width: 535px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><h1 class="fr-text-spaced fr-text-bordered">Tell us your priorities</h1>What&#39;s important to you today might not reflect what you need in the future. So, in this first phase of engagement, we would like to know what&#39;s important to you now and what you think will be important for future council budget decisions.&nbsp;In the survey below, there are 12 services we provide listed in no particular order. We need you to choose the top 5 which are most important to you now. Just tick the boxes of the 5 which are most important to you and leave the others blank. You will then be asked to repeat the exercise, but thinking of future council budget decisions. What do you think might be important for the council to think about in future years?&nbsp;There are then 2 additional questions. The first provides an opportunity for you to tell us where you think we should focus attention on transforming our business.&nbsp;And finally, we&rsquo;ll ask you about areas where you would like to have a greater say in how services are run in the future.<h1 class="fr-text-bordered fr-text-spaced">What happens next?</h1>This engagement will run until Friday 17th November. We&rsquo;ll be seeking views from a wide range of community groups and individuals during this time. We&rsquo;ll use this survey and encourage as many people as possible to complete it online. If you would prefer to complete the survey using a paper copy, you can print off this survey and hand it in to your local library. Alternatively, your library or nearest customer service office can print the survey for you. We&rsquo;ll also be speaking to community councils at a face to face event.Once the engagement has finished, we&rsquo;ll take all the data you provide and analyse the results, producing a report which will be published on our website and which is available to help councillors shape their budget decisions for 2024/25.But this is just the beginning of a much wider and sustained programme of engagement. Over the next few years, we&rsquo;ll be coming out at least twice a year to engage with residents on a series of topics so we can build up a picture of what matters to you, in your communities.We are committed to an open and transparent process so, as we make those difficult decisions, we&rsquo;ll share our thinking, explain why we&rsquo;re doing what we&rsquo;re doing, and how we can mitigate the worst of the impacts by working more closely with communities.

Budget Engagement for 2024/25

Please help us by completing this short survey. It will take no more than 5 minutes to complete.&nbsp;The data we collect will be used to help us analyse the groups we have reached across Aberdeenshire. No personal data will be shared. You can read more on our <a href="http://publications.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/dataset/f48cbade-8faf-4a77-aa0b-efe2277872a4/resource/f8737ca1-789b-4660-9977-0d8580385160/download/engage-aberdeenshire-privacy-notice.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Privacy statement</a>.

Budget Survey for 2024/25