Hampshire County Council’s budget, which will see an £876million capital programme to provide investment in schools, roads and bridges and superfast broadband, has been approved.

The local authority’s £1.9billion budget for 2015/16, which was approved by councillors at a meeting yesterday, includes its £876m capital programme for 2014 to 2018 and a freeze on the council’s share of council tax for a sixth year in a row.

This means that for each band D property across Hampshire, the county council will receive £1, 037.88.

The budget includes £281m to create 11,300 new school places across Hampshire and to carry out improvements and maintenance to schools across the county.

This includes a £6.6m project to build the new Castle Hill Primary School Rooksdown campus, in Rooksdown, and £4.4m to extend Merton infant and junior schools, in Romsey Close, Popley.

An additional £12.5m has been factored into the children’s services budget to support vulnerable children and the money will also sustain the county council’s Short Breaks programme for children with disabilities and vital youth services across Hampshire for another year.

As well as boosting investment in the county’s schools and children’s services, £136m will be set aside for the structural maintenance of roads and bridges across the county’s highways network.

County council leader, Councillor Roy Perry, said it was a “careful, cautious and competent budget” which puts the county council in a good position to tackle further cuts in Government funding.

He added: “According to Ofsted, our children’s services are some of the best in the country. We lead the country in property and shared services, growing an expanded organisation whereby other councils buy increasing levels of professional services from us, allowing us to retain high quality staff and capacity for the benefit of Hampshire residents.”

Cllr Perry added that the county’s highway network is important to residents across Hampshire, saying: “The condition of Hampshire roads scores highest with road users, again by independent evaluation.”

The county council is expected to look at options on how they can scale back services and provide them in different ways in March as the local authority will need to find around £100m of savings by 2017.