Category: Granton

Balancing Edinburgh’s budget isn’t a game, writes Granton and District Community Council secretary DAVE MACNAB:

The council is on record that it needs to save £67 million from the budget over the next three years.

Whilst they have been encouraging citizens to complete the ‘budget challenge’ – the real information is not in the ‘playing’ of the budget game (this just shows that difficult decisions are sometimes needed) but within the proposals that are on the ‘table’.

This is where the reality sits. This is what could be in store for the citizens of Edinburgh if we sit back and wait for it to happen.

The cuts are real.

There will be reductions in the service. Things will stop being done.

A brief glimpse at what could happen – based on information taken from the Council budget web site and meetings:

• Education Welfare Officers cut from 18 to 16 (jobs lost)
• Community Centres – the budget proposals states:

“redesign the service to meet local needs using co-production models”.

Now you may be wondering just what that means.

At a meeting for Community Centre management boards on 20 November we were told that this could mean setting up social enterprise models that need to make a profit, owned and managed by the community or other self-financing models.

Do the current management boards have the capacity and capability to undertake these roles? The audience at the meeting was not convinced.

There is no point talking about empowerment if there is no investment in the people within the communities who will be asked to undertake this type of ‘work’.  And it is work – it is no longer volunteering – it becomes a business model that needs accountancy skills so that the books are balanced, people who know employment law if they are to employ staff directly, business managers to project plan the activities.

What would be the role of the current staff in the Centres if it was decided to go down a particular business model route?  I don’t know – so many unanswered questions.

• Leisure Centres (e.g. Ainslie Park) the report highlights “It is likely that the scale of the reductions identified may lead to facility closure”.
• Staff – there is a hope to reduce sickness absence across the council workforce. There is an irony here. As posts are not filled and a recruitment freeze – this of course puts pressure on those in jobs, thus increasing their levels of stress and of course increasing levels of sickness absence!
• Parking charges – increase in permit and on street charges
• Increase in charges for allotments
• Close public toilets – Granton Square to close?
• “Proposed to accelerate and extend the development of the ‘Living Landscapes’ approach” – or put another way – let grass areas grow wild.
• “Five libraries recategorised leading to a reduction in opening hours in Piershill, Corstorphine (from 51 to 42 hours) and Sighthill, Granton and Kirkliston (from 42 hours to 32 hours).” Cut in library hours.

This is the reality of the situation.

Spending on public services in Britain is set to fall to the lowest share of national income since 1938 which is a sign of how dramatically the UK government’s austerity programme is reshaping the state. The Child Poverty Action Group stated in August of this year that “more people are income-deprived in Edinburgh than in any other local authority area except Glasgow and North Lanarkshire”.

Two-fifths of adults aged 45 to 64 with below-average incomes have a limiting long- term illness, more than twice the rate for adults of the same age with above-average incomes in areas of economic deprivation – of which north Edinburgh has its share.

To mitigate some of the worst excesses of the impact of poverty and exclusion the council advocates that Community Learning and Development (CLD) will play a “pivotal role” (a direct quote from a council paper).  Yet at the same time this part of the organisation is hit with a budget cut of over £2million.  So how do you square this with the intention towards getting rid of poverty?

It is all very well suggesting that there can be an increase in volunteering opportunities – but do the volunteers have the necessary skills to deal with and help break down social isolation amongst adults and young people – it’s not just a case of turning up.

We need to be clear on what we want to save. What is worth preserving.

We can sit back, have fun playing the ‘budget’ game and hope for the best. Or decide that these services are our services. That the libraries are our libraries. The Community Centres and Leisure Centres are ours.  That we will do something about it.

We will be campaigning to raise awareness on what is at stake and giving you an opportunity of having your say.  Tell your councillor. Go to your respective Community Council meetings, go to public meetings and get your voice heard.

Dave Macnab

Community Councillor – Granton and District Community Council

www.grantonanddistrictcommunitycouncil.com

Contact nabs89@blueyonder.co.uk