“Our evidence tells us that councils are finding the financial pressures increasingly difficult to manage” – Ronnie Hinds, Accounts Commission
Councils are showing increasing signs of financial stress and face even tougher challenges ahead, says the Accounts Commission. In its annual financial overview published today the local authority watchdog says funding has reduced while costs and demands have increased, and more councils are using reserves to fund services.
The Scottish Government provides around two thirds of council budgets. This fell by 5.2 per cent in 2016/17 to £9.7 billion.
2016/17 was also the last year of the council tax freeze. Council tax provides just 14 per cent of councils’ income. The report notes that if all councils chose to raise council tax by three per cent, it would yield an estimated £68 million – broadly comparable to a one per cent pay rise for staff.
Overall council debt rose by £800 million in 2016/17 as councils took advantage of low interest rates to fund projects. While not posing an immediate problem some councils are concerned about longer term affordability.
The report highlights a number of financial pressures. A rising proportion of council funding directed towards national priorities such as educational initiatives means councils have to look at deeper cuts in other services. For example, resources for culture, planning and development, and roads have seen the sharpest falls in funding over the last three years.
The report also looks at the current financial year (2017/18) where councils have approved £317 million of savings and use of £105 million in reserves. Some councils could risk running out of general fund reserves within two or three years if they continue to draw on them at current levels.
The report aims to help councils plan ahead for setting their 2018/19 budgets.
Ronnie Hinds, deputy chair of the Accounts Commission, said: “Our evidence tells us that councils are finding the financial pressures increasingly difficult to manage. The elections in May this year brought in major changes in council administrations across Scotland. Councils that have demonstrated effective leadership and robust planning will be in a better position to deal with the challenges that lie ahead.”
Tag: public services
Letters: Unity is strength
Dear Editor
Capitalism, the system under which we live, constantly tries to retain control over the population. The ways of doing this are many, as a reading of history will show: a catalogue of land thieving, forced clearances, draconian laws and the prosecution of those who resisted. A policy of ‘divide and rule’ always was, and still is, the main tactic.
A recent example, the financial collapse of 2008, is blamed on the Labour Party, dividing organised political resistance against the savage cuts in public services and wages. It is now admitted that the financial crisis was worldwide caused by the banking industry.
From 2010 divide and rule was stepped up,with people not in work accused of being skivers and scroungers. It was then extended to disabled people and those who for many reasons were unable to work, having to claim benefits on which to live. They were then subjected to an assessment on their fitness to work by a private company – despite their having medical certification.
The housing shortage is partly blamed on people occupying a house or flat deemed to have spare rooms, and now this is followed by stories of elderly people being financially better off at the expense of younger generations.
All these example, and many more, are designed to set one against another, making unity more difficult.
To counter this we must show that there are many issues common to everyone, to get people thinking and acting again in a positive manner and making these issues work for the benefit of all.
We all need energy supplies, water and utilities, and a good reliable public transport system. It is not right that these essential services are mainly privately-owned, instead of being run for the benefit of all.
Unity, not division, will change things. There is so much on which to unite, making progress to a better life for all.
A. Delahoy, Silverknowes Gardens
Letters: For the many, not the few
Dear Editor
The working population has always been under pressure struggling to defend and improve their lives and the lives of those dependent on them. The pressure comes from the system of private ownership of industries that operates to maximise profits for individuals and organisations of investors.
The Labour movement, in all it’s forms, has battled against this with notable success, raising the quality of lives and expectations. These expectations should be reflected by the actions of our parliamentarians, but many are supporters of the existing system of private control and ownership and will not support major changes.
Labour Party policy must be to identify essential issues around which maximum unity of public pressure can be built, for example:
- To exist, everyone needs electricity, gas and water supplies yet these essential industries are mostly privately owned.
- To get from home and back to work, rail, bus and tram services are essential; they are also needed for shopping and leisure activities and should be operated for the benefit of all, not to make a profit for investors.
People do expect to pay a fair price for these services but extracting millions and millions of pounds from these industries is totally wrong, particularly when so many people are struggling to pay for the essentials of life.
The campaign to build maximum unity on these and other issues to progress the changes necessary must be a priority for the Labour movement, for no one else will.
It can be done.
A.Delahoy,
Silverknowes Gardens
Trade Union lobby for public services
Tomorrow, 10:30am: Scottish Parliament 
Letters: Essentially yours
Dear Editor
Rightly so, the NHS is looked upon as a public service, an absolute essential for the vast majority of people living in the UK. It took many decades of struggle and activity against conservative opposition to get this principle established and brought into being by the Labour Party supported by the Trade Unions and the unity of the people.
As a public service the NHS is literally a lifeline: how on earth would people cope with the financial cost of private treatment? They just could not.
There are other essential services needed by everyone every day to be able to function.
First, every home need power: electricity or gas for heating and cooking. Many households cannot do both properly as it is too expensive, yet millions of pounds aer made by investors in these private companies. They should be publicly owned and the millions made used for the benefit of consumers.
The same applies to the essential industries of passenger transport;, rail, bus and tram. Millions are made by investors out of people having to use them just to get to and from work. As essential servces they too should be publicly owned.
All these issues are common to all and as necessary as the NHS. To achieve these ojectives, pressure and demand must be developed showing how the greed of the few wealthy investors affects us all.
A. Delahoy
Silverknowes Gardens
A penny for your thoughts
Former Edinburgh District Council Housing and Finance convener JIMMY BURNETT was among the hundreds who took to take part in a demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament to protest at cuts to council budgets yesterday.
He supports Labour’s case for a 1p tax rise – and argues that we must pay more to support crucial public services:
I fully support a one penny tax rise. With the proposed rebate system, those earning £20,000 or less, would pay no additional tax. Those earning £30,000 would pay around £16.00 a month. Those earning £150,000, would pay an additional £28.00 a week, £112.00 extra per month. Continue reading A penny for your thoughts
Letters: Saving our public services
Dear Editor
Local authorities are elected to operate a wide variety of services in their areas, services that keep the community functioning. The trend now is to cut back on what is thought not to be necessary, to offload some to private contractors or to get the community itself to be the provider. Continue reading Letters: Saving our public services
‘Meltdown’: Union fears 3000 council job losses
UNISON says one on six council jobs could go
Trade Union UNISON fears that over 3,000 jobs – one in every six Edinburgh council staff and three times as many jobs as first thought – will be slashed as the effects of accelerated budget cuts become clear, putting the council’s and the Scottish Government’s no compulsory redundancy pledge at risk.
The union has also re-launched its ‘Our City’s Not For Sale’ campaign as reports drawn up by officials put privatisation back on the agenda three years after councillors rejected mass privatisation plans.
“The effect of cuts on services and staff will be devastating as at least 15% of council employees could face being forced out of their jobs”, warned Amanda Kerr, UNISON Edinburgh City branch secretary. “Losing this amount of staff will decimate the services we provide and the public rely on to the point where they would be unrecognisable.
“It is now time for the politicians to stand up for the pledges they were elected on and support UNISON in the fight to save public services in Edinburgh for future generations.”
Lead Edinburgh UNISON negotiator Tom Connolly warned of the effect on services: “Every job lost is a service lost, a school closed, a care home closed, young and old put at risk. UNISON will defend these services and any compulsory redundancies will trigger our longstanding policy to ballot members on action.”
UNISON is calling for meaningful consultation and will demand that the council honours its no compulsory redundancy pledge and its ‘presumption’ against privatisation.
“If there is the political will to save Edinburgh’s services from these vicious government cuts, then councillors need to make sure that officials fully understand that”, said branch president John Stevenson, calling again on the Scottish Government to step in with emergency money to save services while they look at a fairer funding system.
“There has been a deafening silence on the massive cuts local councils have faced with 40,000 jobs lost in the last few years. The government needs to face up to the crisis and make funding available before services disappear for ever.”
UNISON will lobby the Council’s Finance and Resources Committee next Thursday (24 September).
For further information visit http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/citynotforsale/
Letter: Take back our essential services
Dear Editor
For six years the Tory government has carried out sweeping cuts to the people’s income and they have decimated social services of all kinds – in the name of dealing with the financial crisis caused by the banks and financial institutions.
These financial institutions – here and overseas – are still creating havoc: buying and selling shares regardless of the effect this has one people’s lives here and overseas.
Yet despite all the evidence of greed and complete mismanagement, political action taken by the Tories is mainly against the people, not the culprits!
Why did the Tories poll 37% of the votes cast in the general election (although this was a minority of the population’s vote, it gave them enough to form a government)? Their access, support and possible control of most avenues of information, newspapers, etc. gave them a tremendous advantage, coupled with their ‘we have a plan’, repeated over and over again, convinced many people to give them another chance – a terrible mistake, and the bad effects of their policies will be increasingly felt.
The Tories always were and always will be the political representatives of the rich, who assume it is their natural right to govern.
As 90% of the population are wage earners, in other words they sell their ability to labour daily, to get the best possible wages and working conditions it is far better to have representation for your interests: the same is very true of political representatives.
To repeat, the Tories always represent the rich, the Liberals are never very sure for whom they speak and that leaves the Labour movement of unions, co-operatives, the Labour Party and SNP.
The Labour movement must now show they have a plan, a plan that works for and benefits the 90% of the population: for example free from private profit making the services that enable the 90% to function – gas, electricity, water, rail and road transport, among others.
A. Delahoy, Silverknowes Gardens
Letter: People Matter
Dear Editor
Information available through newspapers, television and radio have contributed to the disillusion beu#ing felt about politics. I believe it is confusion caused by the similarity of party programmes, in effect making people pay for the debts caused by banks and investors, also having many public services cut and cut again.
Without making changes in the system there is no guarantee this will not happen again. Confusion will lessen and a high level of unity could be had around an initial programme of taking back services from private investors: services that are absolutely essential to be run for the benefit of everyone.
The obvious ones on which we all depend include electricity, gas, water and sewerage and the rail network.
Real hope would be established that, at last, PEOPLE MATTER!
A. Delahoy, Silverknowes Gardens