We have 60 councillors, across 58 wards serving our 842,313 residents. We are the corporate parents for 848 children and young people in need, and our care workers visit 2,300 people at home every day to help them start their day. Our 5,000 staff work across the whole of Devon and many of our services, including highways, adult social care, inclusion and learning and childrens service work within localities and alongside the communities they serve.
We support 96,400 pupils in primary, secondary and special schools, including 364 state-funded schools where we employ a further 5,000 staff. Every day we transport 17,000 children and young people to school safely; we look after 8,000 miles of roads and subsidise 30% of bus journeys taken. Last year, 2,200 people were supported to quit smoking, 20,800 health checks were undertaken and 12,800 children participated in the national child measurement programme, contributing to population health and well-being.
We collaborate with our businesses, supporting growth sectors and help new businesses start up. Every day we engage and support 150 businesses with advice and guidance. We support skills development helping people access work and our enterprises find the skilled workforce they need and have a good success rate of securing national funding to increase workforce skills. Our adult community learning service delivers English, maths and skills training in more than 34 rural and coastal locations, each year supporting 4,500 learners with high achievement rates and targeted interventions for digital inclusion, care leavers and young asylum seekers.
We work with all state-funded secondary schools, special educational needs institutions, alternative provision settings, and post-16 colleges to establish strong partnerships with local employers. Through these connections, we support the delivery of careers education and guidance, helping young people gain knowledge and skills to make informed decisions about their futures. We identify and track over 24,000 young people and support around 650 vulnerable young people who are not in education, employment or training towards work or learning every year.
We work with our public sector partners, helping people live healthy lives and keeping communities safe. We work with town and parish councils, and district partners to support communities, addressing in partnership inequalities. We supported nearly 50,000 households through the Household Support Fund between September 2024 and March 2025.
A higher percentage of household waste in Devon is reused, recycled or composted, significantly outperforming the national average. We have also notably reduced household waste sent to landfill to just 0.5%, far surpassing comparator groups, although there is variation across our districts. Greenhouse gas emissions are above the regional and national averages and fuel poverty rates have increased significantly over recent years and are particularly high in more deprived rural areas
This year we are delivering a £1.987 billion budget, working with all councillors through our scrutiny and audit committees to ensure we deliver value for money. Our core spending power is below the national average growth rate when compared to other authorities and we received the lowest increase of all 21 county councils for 25/26 financial year.
The rate of sickness absence across our staff was above the Southwest comparator group (7.4 days) and national averages (9.9 days) in 2022/23, which is the latest data set available from the Local Government Association (LGA). Recent local data demonstrates this has fallen from 10.9 to 8.9 days. Turnover for non-schools-based staff is 11.6% (2022/23) which is lower than both the Southwest comparator group at 14.7% and national average at 13.6%. The latest available LGA data (2022/23) however includes Devon showing a higher figure at 18% because it includes schools-based staff. Most recent non-schools based local data demonstrates that this further reduced to 9.06% in 2024/25. The latest gender pay gap for local authority staff highlights that males earn 8.6% more than females, which is influenced by higher proportions of females in lower grade and part-time roles.
Our Annual Performance Report sets out more detail of the progress of our council, including across identified areas of improvement. The report provides a baseline of current performance to measure our next four years’ ambitions and strategic priorities. Corporate Plan Cabinet Report 23.07.25.pdf