Cash fight
Leaders at odds over budget
North Ayrshire Council’s leader has rejected the SNP government’s budget offer, which he says will leave a £17 million black hole in the council’s finances.
Labour Councillor Joe Cullinane turned down the offer from SNP finance secretary Derek Mackay, who has written to Scottish councils with his budget proposals.
Councillor Joe Cullinane said the offer came with a ‘threatening’ ultimatum from the SNP chief that any council not accepting it by January 26 would get an even worse deal.
Councillor Cullinane accused the SNP government of breaking its promise to fully fund the expansion of early years provision by claiming it was being funded by cuts else- where in council budgets. He said that of the £150m capital funding for early years, £60m was funded by cutting the capital revenue grant which will hit other projects.
Councillor Cullinane said: ‘North Ayrshire Council faces the largest single year financial deficit in its history. Mr Mackay and the SNP are threatening to impose draconian cuts on our communities.
Austerity
‘They are once again selling out council workers too. Nine in 10 of the public sector jobs in Scotland that have been lost through austerity have been in local government as the SNP choose to dump cuts on to councils.
‘Now the SNP wants to claim it has ended the public sector pay cap when in reality its pay policy only covers a fraction of public sector workers in Scotland. With councils facing an effective cut of £700m next year it’s clear the SNP is happy to see council workers’ pay award funded through their colleagues losing their jobs.’
Councillor Cullinane said the Scottish Parliament did not have to pass on Tory cuts as it had a range of fiscal powers to explore alternatives.
‘Mr Mackay can threaten my administration all he likes but he knows he needs opposition support to pass his budget. If he wants me to support his budget then he will need to quickly find £17m for North Ayrshire Council because anything less will leave us facing cuts,’ he said.
The claims were dismissed by SNP North Ayrshire group leader Marie Burns, who said Councillor Cullinane should stop trying to scare workers and service users.
‘Councillor Cullinane is living in a parallel universe in which the sums he mentions bear no resemblance whatsoever to the actual figures in the draft budget settlement for North Ayrshire,’ she said.
‘Even after inflation, the reduction in funding is 1.2 per cent, according to the politically independent Scottish Parliament Information Centre. That is before additional funding of an anticipated £4m is provided to North Ayrshire Council following further deliberations at Holyrood.
‘Of course, North Ayrshire Council would have an additional £13m available this year, were it not for Labour’s disastrous PFI schemes and would be £5.1m a year worse off if the SNP Government had not rejected Labour’s proposals to fund Glasgow at the expense of North Ayrshire.’