Budget cuts

Sir At the full council meeting of North Ayrshire Council in November, we received a report from our finance officer showing that our budget was £92m less than it needed to be versus the situation in 2010/11. Add to that the effects of the SNP’s Council Tax freeze from 2007, and the sum is nearer £100m. That’s £100m short of what we need to deliver vital services.

On Wednesday, Derek MacKay presented his budget to Holyrood. Mr MacKay suggested there was an increase in council budgets, but there isn’t – there is a cut. That’s another cut in a succession of cuts from the SNP. According to COSLA, the cut is £273m for 2019/20. So the NAC budget will be cut again, we just wait to see by how much.

We all suffer from these cuts. Cuts make it more difficult to address potholes in our roads, books and teacher shortages in our schools, care shortages for our ill, elderly or infirm. They make it difficult to find the money to invest in local causes: community centres, town centres, town halls, libraries, roads and pavements. The other victims are council workers whose jobs have been cut and whose wages have fallen behind since the SNP came to power in 2007. Nobody voted for these cuts. Derek MacKay even denies they exist, but they do, and they are destroying our local infrastructure and our vital services. That’s your vital services.

One problem we have, which I find very frustrating, is that SNP councillors in North Ayrshire refuse to fight the cuts from the SNP at Holyrood. Can I suggest that anyone who depends on council services, or has relatives or neighbours who depend on these services, write to your local SNP group of councillors at Cunninghame House demanding they oppose any further cuts to our budget and to your services?

It will register your concerns and, who knows, it might even give our SNP councillors a bit of backbone to fight for North Ayrshire rather than just cave in to their own party interests.

Yours, Alex Gallagher, Labour Councillor North Coast and Cumbraes.