Now that the blog has been resurrected, we may as well dive
right in with this year's Council Budget which will be set tomorrow. Things are
looking pretty grim financially for Councils across Scotland with Edinburgh
alone needing to cut £85 million from this year's spending.
As per recent years we published a draft budget last
September and consulted with the Edinburgh public until mid December.
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| Council funding is broken... |
Most of the financial cuts will be achieved through losing
staff, about 2000 jobs. Many have left and more will follow through the
voluntary schemes available. We want to protect front line services as far as
possible but there has to be some impact from cuts that are so deep.
Council funding is reducing while demand for services is
increasing. And local government's share of the Scottish Government's budget is
also reducing. We're clearly not a high enough priority. Doing more with less
is the current mantra but the credibility of such an approach is becoming
stretched.
Local government funding is broken and that was also the
conclusion reached by the Commission on Local Tax Reform . It now falls to the
political parties of Scotland to come forward with workable, understandable and
supportable alternatives for funding local services. I've argued for some time
that we need to have a debate about what local services we want in our
communities and how will we pay for them. The time for that debate is now and
we need a decision on the changes very soon.
This is not a budget that we want to be agreeing and is
easily the most difficult that I have faced in 17 years as an Edinburgh
Councillor.
Further detail i.e. the Council reports and the various
motions to be debated tomorrow can be accessed on this link to the Council's CPOL page.
