The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Officials in warning over stretched council funds
Report highlights problems faced in Tayside and Fife as budget looms
Council officers have spoken about the impact of cuts for Tayside and Fife ahead of the Scottish Budget.
Senior officials in Dundee said the financial situation is “worse than it’s ever been” with funds pared to the bone.
In Fife, town hall staff are crowdfunding grants previously covered by the council, said testimony given to Holyrood and university researchers.
Finance Secretary Derek Mackay will unveil his draft 2019-20 Budget tomorrow after three years of real terms cut to local government.
The report said Fife Council is looking at “local fundraising to make up shortfalls and provide new services”.
An officer in the kingdom said: “Things like crowdfunding…rather than providing one-off grants for community groups….we could maybe put in 50%, and encourage groups to raise an element themselves.”
A Dundee official said: “There’s probably not much that we can shave from our service areas now.”
Another officer said: “In the early days the changes we were making were almost voluntary within services…things we’d like to be doing anyway.
“It’s become more about the money.” The anonymous interventions are unusual in that they are by non-political officers, who operate behind the scenes.
The briefing was compiled by independent Scottish Parliament Information Service with Glasgow and Heriot Watt universities.
Researchers spoke to council officers as part of case studies on three councils, including Dundee and Fife.
Dundee City Council, which is run by the SNP, has been forced to make savings of £50 million over three years.
The figure at Fife Council, a joint SNPLabour administration is £62m.
The briefing also found that Angus is among the group of Scottish councils under the most budgetary pressure, with savings in 2018-19 amounting to 3.7% of spending.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Despite continued UK Government real terms cuts to Scotland’s resource budget, we have treated local government very fairly – and in the current financial year they received a real terms boost in both revenue and capital funding.”