Row over claim North Ayrshire is getting biggest budget boost

Arran’s MSP Kenneth Gibson has welcomed North Ayrshire Council’s (NAC) £23,237,000 increase in grant from the SNP government for next year.

The 8.3 per cent increase takes its grant to £303,079,000.

The increase for NAC is the highest in Scotland, the average being 4.64 per cent.

Last week’s Scottish budget saw finance secretary Derek Mackay MSP announce total funding of £11,151,140,000 for local government. This is despite a reduction in Scotland’s block grant of almost £2 billion – seven per cent – over the past decade.

Mr Gibson, who serves on the Scottish Parliament's local government and communities committee, said: ‘People on Arran will welcome this significant investment in their local services. Despite continued Tory cuts to Scotland’s resource budget, every local authority in Scotland has seen their funding increase in this year’s budget and I am delighted NAC will receive the highest increase of all, allowing it to invest more in local services.

‘These figures prove the SNP government is committed to funding councils to deliver better schools, roads and key services in communities across Scotland, including Arran.’

But North Ayrshire Labour has slammed the SNP’s budget which, it says, will devastate communities across Scotland, including here in North Ayrshire.

Despite claims by the SNP that funding for local government is increasing in real terms, independent analysis by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre has shown that core revenue funding to Scotland’s councils is being cut by 3.4 per cent. The average reduction in revenue funding over the past five years has been two per cent.

North Ayrshire Labour leader Joe Cullinane said: ‘Since the start of austerity in 2010, more than £90 million of cuts have been made to North Ayrshire Council’s budget and yet this year’s settlement is probably the worst to date.

‘This is a shockingly bad budget for local government services, the workers who deliver those services and the communities who rely on them.

‘It is absolutely shameful the SNP is manipulating funding for national policies to pull the wool over the public’s eyes to hide their cuts to local services.

‘This budget is absolutely unacceptable to North Ayrshire Labour and we will be fighting for a fair deal over the coming weeks. No doubt our counterparts in the SNP will undertake their annual exercise of welcoming this austerity budget, a budget that will oversee millions of pounds of cuts to the local services they were elected to deliver.’