But council will be forced to dip into reserves to cover £7m budget gap

South Lanarkshire’s political groups came together last week to pass a “consensus budget” and remove £3 million of proposed savings.

Council tax will still be increased by three per cent but cuts to leisure centre opening hours, classroom materials budgets, flood risk management and trading standards were among those removed from the table.

Despite this, £7 million of savings still had to be made and the council will have to dip into its reserves more next year to cover the budget gap.

The budget was approved after negotiations between the political groups.

Overall, the local authority agreed a total of £6.922 million in savings for 2020-21.

At a meeting of the full council last Wednesday, council leader John Ross (Hamilton South) hailed the “constructive” approach from all party groups when working towards a budget.

He told the chamber: “This is a consensus budget.

“I believe these proposals represent the best possible deal for the residents we represent.

“They seek efficiency while putting every penny to good use.

“I think every group was able to defend most, or all, of their own ‘red lines’ as we worked our way towards a budget that was acceptable to all.

“Indeed, the more we talked the more we realised how many red lines we had in common and agreed upon, especially when it came to protecting services for our young people in our schools.

“Everyone deserves praise for their constructive approach. I would particularly like to thank Councillor Margaret Cooper for chairing the crossparty meetings.”

Councillor Ross added that the budget was “not a long-term solution”, as they would be using more of the council’s reserves than initially proposed.

He said that previous years’ budgets had made a real difference to the lives and life prospects of people across South Lanarkshire.

He revealed that last week a landmark was achieved when the council provided its 300,000th free breakfast in primary schools, following a project which was piloted in 2017-18 and rolled