Tough decisions needed

Real negotiationsfor publicspendingcuts

I share the concerns expressed in last week’s letter from Healthy n Happy about the impact of cuts in public spending on our communities.

I’ve spent 20 years as a councillor fighting for the best possible services for local people, especially the young, the old and the vulnerable.

In recent years, because of cuts to the council’s funding, that has mostly meant protecting services from the impact of austerity.

As I wrote in the Reformer two weeks ago, the council’s original savings target for next year was £35million.

This would take the total we have been forced to take out of our budget in recent years to £150m – and in six years we will have lost almost 1,300 council jobs.

I have hated being forced to make these types of cuts and it has not been easy to find savings, but we have done everything we can to protect key frontline services.

While the Scottish Government gives us no ring-fenced funds for tackling poverty, we have directed resources to help local communities and tackle economic inequality.

As part of this we have worked for many years in partnership with third sector groups such as Healthy n Happy.

For the benefit of new readers to this issue let me repeat: we are simply asking that Healthy n Happy next year uses £96,000 from the money it has in the bank to make up for a one-off hiatus in council funding.

If they do that they can continue to provide all their services and retain all their staff and volunteers, not just their work promoting healthy options for kids and good mental health, but also funding activities like their bicycle repairs service and radio station.

After all, the council is using its own reserves to limit the cuts next year.

All we are asking is that Healthy n Happy do the same, as part of a long- term plan to protect the council’s core work, including fighting poverty by tackling inequality in incomes, housing, care and life opportunities.

In last week’s letter Healthy n Happy suggested the council was being misleading in pointing out that they have £854,000 in reserve.

However, their own accounts show the total funds are at this level – and in my column I also made it clear that £156,000 of this was unrestricted funds.

They confirmed this in their own letter, and it is worth adding that this sum included £23,000 which they were able to add to the sums they have in the bank in the last reported financial year.

These unrestricted reserves do not include the value of their property, and there is no requirement to keep the money in the bank to cover legal obligations.

In fact, Healthy n Happy’s own guidelines say these reserves are there to cater for situations where there are fluctuations in their income.

This is such a situation. Eddie McAvoy Council leader, South Lanarkshire Council