THE CUTS ARE STILL COMING

Holyrood cash won’t stop halt savings purge

South Lanarkshire Council is still facing huge cuts despite additional money promised in last week’s Scottish budget.

Councillors on an executive committee will today , Wednesday, discuss savings of £19 million for 2017/18, with 220 jobs to go.

Council leader Eddie McAvoy will propose removing 20 savings worth £3.4m from the package.

The move comes after finance minister Derek McKay announced additional £7.8m in revenue funding and £1.6m in capital funding.

As this payment is a one off, McAvoy will propose £1m from the revenue pot is used to alleviate pressure on social work and £3.4m is used for the replacement of care facilities.

He will suggest the capital funding is used for the care facility project.

If the proposals are accepted it will mean Rutherglen and Cambuslang retaining their £7500 council grant.

Other changes would see scrapping shared janitors at schools within half a mile of one another (£26,000) and retaining the dedicated green waste collection service (£84,000).

Over £ 1.2m of the money will be used to alleviate cuts in education. Psychological ser vices, home school partnership workers, youth learning services staff, support staff and the mobile crèche service will all benefit.

An extensive home care review saving £1.07m will be scrapped for the time being.

Councillor McAvoy said: “Even though the government has now reduced the scale of its cut to local government funding, the council still has to make £19m of cuts.

“Unfortunately that means that we will still have to make some tough decisions as we set the budget for the next financial year. As a result, some of our services will still be affected and we will lose more than 220 council posts.

“However, we are now in a position where we can look again at some of the savings proposals that we were originally forced to consider.

“Many of the changes that I am proposing are in social work and education, so if they are accepted it would have a very positive impact on the services we provide for the elderly, the young and the vulnerable.”

The budget passed stage one last Thursday, but only with support from Green MSPs. The SNP and Greens hailed the settlement, but opposition parties are less enthusiastic.

Rutherglen MSP Clare Haughey said: “This Scottish Government budget provides a strong funding deal for South Lanarkshire, giving spending commitments in the NHS, education, infrastructure, environment and the economy.

“For the opposition parties, with the exception of the Greens, to vote against all of this was against the best interests of our communities.

“It was disappointing to see Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems more interested in political point scoring rather than standing up for Rutherglen and Cambuslang.”

Green council candidate, David McClemont said: “This is the biggest budget concession in Holyrood’s history. Other parties effectively ruled themselves out of constructive dialogue. My Green colleagues have achieved more in a single budget than some parties have in a decade of opposition.”

However, Labour MSP James Kelly said Haughey had voted for cuts to local services.

He said: “Any claim that the SNP are stopping Tory cuts is just bluffing. It’s clear that the SNP have failed at being the progressive party Nicola Sturgeon used to brag about.

“Labour would tax the richest one per cent more to invest in education.”

Rutherglen South councillor Gerard Killen added: “The SNP’s attitude to councils is appalling. In their decade of power, they’ve forced cuts on local communities.”