Residents have their say on council spending

‘Bearing in mind the financial situation, what actions can we take to maintain, develop and improve services in Edinburgh?’

That was the question posed to Forth and Inverleith residents at a meeting held in Heriots Rugby Club last week and more than 40 participants took the opportunity to express their views on what the council’s spending priorities should be at the local event.  The meeting was the last in a series of six consultation events organised by the city council across Edinburgh over recent weeks.

Opening the meeting Chief Financial Officer Karen Kelly gave a summary of where the City Council currently spends it’s money and went on to look at spending projections.  It was a gloomy prognosis – there’s no doubt Edinburgh, like all local authorities, faces tough financial challenges over the coming years, with significant savings needing to be made.  Longer term, it looks even tougher: demographic indicators suggest the city’s older population will grow considerably – the forecast is that there will be a 72% increase in the number of citizens over the age of 75 by the year 2035, putting added pressure on already stretched spending on health and social care budgets.

So how does the city address the challenges ahead?  It was over to Children and Families’ Gillian Hunt to conduct the main part of the exercise; facilitating small workshop groups to encourage ideas and discussion.  Individuals were asked to come up with ideas which were then fed into the bigger group and noted on flipcharts.  There was no shortage of ideas and suggestions – from the ‘do-able’ to the downright loopy – and the exercise ended with individuals being asked to prioritise their three ‘favourites’ and allocate points from some pretty long lists.  A bit like the Eurovision Song Contest …

Unfortunately – as inevitably happens at events like this – time was at a premium and some enthusiastic discussions were cut short as time ran out.  There was no time, either, for feedback from the various groups or an opportunity to elaborate on points raised in workshops.  Services for Communities chief Mark Turley, however, thought that the exercise proved very worthwhile.  Thanking participants, he said:  “I hope you have found this useful – I thought it was a very good event and we could have used a lot more time.  The findings of tonight’s workshops will be posted on the Neighbourhood Partnership websites and each of the political groups will receive a copy of the report.”

A summary of the workshop findings will appear on the Neighbourhood Partnership website soon:  go to:

www.edinburgh.gov.uk/neighbourhood-partnership

What do you think the Council’s spending priorities should be?  Let us know!