Councillors look to set budget for year ahead
Tough decisions needed to plug gap in finances
South Lanarkshire councillors were set to vote on the budget yesterday (Wednesday).
At the full council meeting, elected members were expected to finalise the figures for the upcoming financial year.
Council leader Joe Fagan has already warned that 2023 will be the most volatile year there has ever been for local authorities setting budgets.
Options have been put forward by the administration for councillors to review and vote on.
Other political groups may also put forward their own amendments, and the SNP group announced they would present an alternative budget proposal.
Current proposals from the administration include two options to address the budget gap.
A gap of £16.318 million was identified, but through savings and solutions adding up to £7.5m, there is a revised budget shortfall of £8.818m which will be required to be closed and is reflected in the proposals.
Options from the administration include increasing the level of Council Tax and/or introducing savings proposals. The council outlined that increasing Council
Tax would mean they could reduce the level of cuts needed to balance the upcoming budget.
Currently, the council’s band D rate at 2022/2023 levels is the lowest for mainland Scotland, and increasing the rate would allow the council to reduce the cuts required to balance the upcoming budget.
Each one per cent increase in Band D would generate £1.42m.
The council have also outlined a range of saving proposals, which could be introduced.
Those include a range of measures to save money and generate income for the council.
A range of options have been outlined, including the removal of school meals being free for all primary four and five pupils.
Children entitled to free meals would still receive them but there is no statutory requirement to provide free meals for these groups.
Stopping this would see the council achieving a saving of around £0.839m.
Another option includes increasing the charge of secondary school meals to £2.40 which is the average charge across all Scottish Local Authorities.
This would generate a saving of £0.355m. The council also proposes to introduce a £2 charge for parking at key attractions across various council services including South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture attractions – examples include Tinto Hill, Chatelherault Country Park, Calderglen Country Park and James Hamilton Heritage Park.
This would generate around £0.2m.
Another option proposed is to reduce the provision of access to period products in schools and communities.
This is a legislative requirement for the council to provide, but the local authority will still ensure that legislative obligations are met.
This would create a saving of £0.100m.
The council also proposes to remove the first free bulk uplift of items and introduce a charge of £37.50 for all requests.
This would generate a saving of £0.395m.
An increased charge for cremations has also been proposed, increasing it to £808.33 which would make an additional income of £0.200m.
As well as this, the council is considering reducing the level of funding for summer programmes for children.
This would potentially achieve a saving of £0.577m. Plans to reduce the daily holiday support payment by 10 per cent have also been proposed.
Scottish Government funding was provided to allow payments for free school meals in holiday periods to eligible children; the council is exploring options to revisit the policy and reduce the daily payment from £2.50 to £2.25. This would generate a saving of £0.149m.
From all of the cuts in the savings proposal, the council could free up a total of £13.094m.