Festive bills rise at cash-hit councils

ONE in four councils is increasing spending on Christmas events while making cuts to services, new figures show.

Eight of Scotland’s 32 local authorities added to their festive outlay compared with 2011, statistics released under freedom of information laws show.

A total of 29 councils provided responses to the survey by the Scottish Daily Mail.

Of these North Lanarkshire will spend £255,323 on decorations this year – up 45 per cent – despite cutting nearly 300 jobs and shutting seven community centres.

Falkirk’s festive spending rose from £134,532 to as much as £157,000. South Ayrshire’s spending grew 60 per cent from £16,135 to £26,000. West Lothian, Orkney and East Dunbartonshire added nearly £10,000 each to their outlays. West Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire’s rose slightly.

Eben Wilson, director of the campaign group Taxpayer Scotland, said: ‘People like to see a bright, colourful high street at this time of year, but they also want to see basic services maintained week in, week out.’

A Falkirk Council spokesman said its set budget for Christmas decorations ‘has not increased since 2011’. He added: ‘We don’t spend up to the maximum budget allocated to decorating our town centres every year. The actual spend can vary year by year.’

A North Lanarkshire spokesman said: ‘Our costs for Christmas lights and trees vary from year to year… because we replace old, inefficient lights with new LED displays on a rolling basis.’