Still tough decisions ahead

South Lanarkshire Council leader Eddie McAvoy says he wants to protect as many frontline services as possible by removing a number of cuts from next years’s budget.

Mr McAvoy’s move would see the removal of 20 proposals totalling £3.406 million following confirmation from the Scottish Government that it has reduced the size of its cut to the council’s grant.

As well as dropping these savings suggestions, Mr McAvoy said he wanted to use some of the money the council will now receive as a result of an additional £160m for local government to invest in social work and care facilities.

He said:“Even though the government has now reduced the scale of its cut to local government funding, the council still has to make £19m of cuts to balance our budget.

“Unfortunately, that means that we will still have to make some tough decisions as we set the budget for the next financial year.

“However, we are now in a position where we can look again at some of the savings proposals that we were originally forced to consider.

“Many of the changes that I am proposing are in social work and education, so if they are accepted it would have a very positive impact on the services we provide for the elderly, the young and the vulnerable.”

However, at this time, there is no indication that the extra funding will be permanent.

In addition to the £3.406m in savings suggestions which could now be dropped, Mr McAvoy will propose that £1m of the revenue funding be used to help manage demand pressures on social work services during the ongoing integration of NHS and council services through the South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership.

Furthermore, the council leader will propose that the £3.372m balance in revenue funding plus the £1.624m of capital funding is used to boost the council’s programme to replace its care facilities.

This would mean that rather than replacing two of the council’s eight care homes, three homes could be replaced.

The council leader had already ruled out a council tax rise for 2017/18, saying that local residents had suffered enough as a result of austerity.

Although taxes will rise in some higher bands due to changes approved by the Scottish Parliament last year, there will be no general increase at a local level.