Strategic Budget Scenario Planner

Comparing housing investment pathways for Leeds City Council against an envelope derived from its own published spend.

Solver: CP-SAT

Three options, deliberately. This tool generates budget scenarios from historic spend and declared constraints. They are options intended for evidence-led decision support, not final policy mandates — and no single scenario is presented as the correct answer.

The strategies do not diverge under this envelope.

All three select the same programmes, because every identified programme is affordable within one year of observed spend — the budget constraint is not binding. The trade-offs these strategies are designed to expose only appear once the envelope is tighter than the need, or once more distinct programmes are identified. With 4 programmes classified from published text, the model has too little to choose between.

Constraints

Available budget

£119.7M

One year of Leeds’s own observed housing expenditure, annualised from published data.

Delivery capacity cap

45% maximum share per programme

Assumptions

The envelope is one year of this council's own observed housing expenditure (£119,709,543), annualised from 35 months of published data.
No single category may take more than 45% of the envelope, on the assumption that delivery capacity rather than funding is the binding constraint.
Categories are funded at their observed annualised run rate; the model does not assume efficiency gains from consolidation.
Priority values derive from published expenditure only. Hazard assessments, EPC ratings and stock condition are not available, so safety and energy weights reflect the nature of the work rather than measured need.

Highest allocation

Safety-First Protocol

Prioritises immediate structural and fire-safety compliance across high-risk assets.

Allocated: £89.9M; (75%)
Duration: 12-18 Months
Risk: Very low

Energy-Efficiency-First

Focuses on retrofitting low-EPC properties to reduce long-term fuel poverty and emissions.

Allocated: £89.9M; (75%)
Duration: 36+ Months
Risk: Moderate

Balanced Public Value

Equitable distribution across safety, condition and energy for a mixed portfolio.

Allocated: £89.9M; (75%)
Duration: 24 Months
Risk: Balanced

Allocation by programme

Programme	Safety-First Protocol	Energy-Efficiency-First	Balanced Public Value
Aids & adaptations	£1,493,201	£1,493,201	£1,493,201
Other housing	£53,869,294	£53,869,294	£53,869,294
Planned maintenance	£104,183	£104,183	£104,183
Responsive repairs	£34,478,318	£34,478,318	£34,478,318
Unallocated	£29,764,545	£29,764,545	£29,764,545

Sensitivity

Input	Change	Effect on the result
Budget envelope	±20%	Changes the number of categories fully funded. The ranking between them is stable because it is driven by weights, not by the envelope.
Category classification coverage	Unclassified spend reclassified	Directly moves the annual cost of each category and can reorder the allocation. This is the single largest source of uncertainty in the model.
Delivery capacity cap	45% → 100%	Concentrates the allocation into the top one or two categories and leaves less unallocated.
EPC and hazard data	Becomes available	Would replace the proxy safety and energy weights with measured need and could substantially reorder priorities.

Scenario confidence is 60%. It is bounded by the programme priorities beneath it, which are themselves derived from published spend alone — without hazard assessments, EPC ratings or stock condition data. Treat these as a structured way to compare trade-offs, not as a capital programme.