Luxury junket for cash-hit councils
Councillors will next month debate swingeing cuts to their budgets – at “Scotland’s leading leisure resort”.
Around 120 councillors and officials are heading for the four- star Crieff Hydro Hotel in Perthshire for the two-day annual meeting of Cosla, the local authority umbrella organisation.
Cosla president David O’Neill had earlier protested that £500million had been cut from councils’ spending plans for the financial year, starting last April.
Yet civic representatives who live within an hour’s drive of the venue will still find cash to fund £480-a-head overnight stays at the Hydro.
They include delegates from councils named and shamed last week for having the most deprived areas in the country.
The total bill to the public will be at least £ 60,000.
Eben Wilson of Taxpayer Scotland said: “Families with l ittle money who struggle to pay council tax can see once again there is one world for the privileged and one for the suckers who pay for those privileges.”
Job losses and the erosion of local services will provide the “key focus” for the conference between October 6 and 7.
O’Neill said: “This oncea- year, two- day event provides a perfect opportunity for leading councillors across Scotland to network, share expertise and develop thinking around policy areas and issues which they can then bring forward/implement for the greater good of communities.”