I want £60m more South Lanarkshire if I can’t get that everything I can penny I can out Government’s
Council leader calls out to local authorities and Local authorities are facing funding challenges and reporter Shannon Milmine sat down with South Lanarkshire Council Leader Joe Fagan to discuss the local situation
South Lanarkshire Council’s leader has warned that this is the most volatile year ever for council budgets – due to ‘inadequate’ funding from the Scottish Government.
Councillor Joe Fagan has called out Holyrood for not listening to local authorities and is calling for more funding.
It comes after an estimated £60 million is needed for South Lanarkshire’s budget. And the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) has issued an SOS over local government budgets, estimating that a further £1 billion is needed for councils to balance their books. The Scottish Government has unveiled plans to give local authorities a further £550m this year, but according to COSLA this is not enough.
Cllr Fagan said: “Councils are asking for £1bn more this year, the Scottish Government say we’re getting £550m more which is half of what councils are asking for. “Once COSLA accounts for money that is ring-fenced or otherwise committed, for the core council budget, there’s only another £38m available.
“South Lanarkshire’s share of that would be around six per cent, and six percent of a billion would be £60m, but six percent of £38m is about £2.2m. It’s completely inadequate to deal with the burden of austerity that has been shifted onto councils over a sustained period of time, and the rising cost we see, particularly this year, because of the exceptionally high rates of inflation.”
Cllr Fagan has joined with every council leader in Scotland, who all say this is a funding crisis for local authorities.
He went on: “COSLA issued a statement just before Christmas and we passed a motion unanimously, so every council leader in Scotland has said the Scottish budget as it stands imposes socially harmful cuts on Scottish local government.
“Every council leader and every political group at COSLA is totally signed up to this demand for a billion pounds more to come into the system.
“As far as I’m concerned the towns and villages of South Lanarkshire are paying the price for a discriminatory policy that is deliberately biased against local government, so there is unanimity in local government that this budget is bad for councils and it is bad for communities.”
The South Lanarkshire administration is fully behind COSLA’s campaign for extra funding and is pushing the Scottish Government for an extra injection of cash to protect the area’s vital services.
Cllr Fagan said: “We’ve taken the budget COSLA campaign for a starting point. “We estimate that our share of what COSLA say is required is around £60m. I am fully supporting the campaign because I want £60m more to come to South Lanarkshire this year and if I can’t get that, I’m going to do everything I can to get every penny I can out of the Scottish Government because