Working for you
As council leader, last week I had the honour and privilege of presenting the SNP administration’s firstever budget.
Last May, the people of South Lanarkshire voted for change and the budget delivers that change, despite the very real challenges posed by austerity policies of the Conservative government at Westminster.
However, thanks in part to a larger financial settlement from the Scottish Government than we thought possible, we were able to scrap many original savings proposals and produce a progressive budget which was approved.
If I had to pick a theme for our budget I would say that it is designed to improve the lives and life prospects of local children, especially those in most need of our help.
This includes new initiatives which will introduce breakfast clubs and holiday activity lunch clubs to provide activities and healthy meals for children.
There is also a 50 per cent increase in the clothing and footwear allowance for pupils entitled to it.
As for some of our other initiatives, we will also fund 17 new mainstream teachers, 15 new Additional Support Need (ASN) teachers and 33 new classroom assistants. We will also recruit 50 trainees to work in early years and 50 more in elderly care.
We will also provide free lets so parent councils and PTAs can raise funds without the absurdity of having to pay for the hire of the schools for which they are raising money – also, there is a three per cent uplift in grants to third sector and voluntary organisations.
We have been able to put an additional £3 million into our roads programme, £1m of which will be for pavement improvements.
Another £17.3m will take forward improvements in social work care facilities and £13m will continue schools modernisation.
Now, when the SNP was in