Scottish Borders Local Association

Parker pledges no compulsory job cuts as council takes £3.8m hit

Published Date: 3 December 2009

By Andrew Keddie

THERE will be no compulsory job losses at Scottish Borders Council next year despite a £3.8million cut in the cash it expected to receive from the Scottish Government and another Council Tax freeze. That was the pledge yesterday from leader David Parker after it was announced that the local authority – the region’s biggest employer – will receive a block grant of just under £247million from Holyrood in 2010/11.

It represents about 80 per cent of the council’s total revenue budget, with the balance raised from Council Tax which, for the third successive year, will be frozen under the so-called concordat with Alex Salmond’s SNP administration.

Councillor Parker confirmed that SBC would receive £4million more than it did last year, but that this was £3.8million less than it was told to expect when the concordat was agreed two years ago.

Mr Parker places the blame on UK chancellor Alistair Darling who, earlier this year, announced a cut of £521million in Scotland’s block grant from the Treasury.

“That equates to a £174million cut in the cash given to Scottish councils and £3.8million is our share. We have worked closely with Mr Swinney in the past few months to ensure we get a fair allocation and I think we have achieved that.”

Across the larger of Scotland’s 32 councils, widespread redundancies have been predicted for next year, most recently in Aberdeen where unions are fighting plans to shed 100 social work staff and more than 80 teachers.

But Mr Parker said there would be no compulsory job losses in 2010/11 and he was “confident” there would be no cuts in devolved school management (DSM) budgets, while admitting education funding would be under severe pressure.

He told us: “As a direct result of Mr Darling’s budget earlier this year, we are dealing with a tight settlement with less money than anticipated, but we are working extremely hard to minimise the impact on frontline services.

“A great deal of work has been done to prepare ... and a number of our reviews carried out previously will generate savings in the new financial year which will significantly benefit us in terms of delivering a budget in February.

“Although the settlement is tight, we are in a stronger position financially than we were at this time last year, so long as all our assumptions hold good.”

One assumption is that the Conventional of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) will successfully negotiate pay rises of less than 3 per cent.

“If that happens, I believe we will be able to deliver a balanced budget that will not have some of the very difficult decisions other councils may have to make,” said Mr Parker. “This is a result of good house-keeping in recent years and very sound preparation and planning processes we have in place.”

He cited a departmental rationalisation programme which had, for example, seen all planning staff centralised at Newtown, and the roll out of the transforming children’s and older people’s services reviews, designed to maximise efficiency and, in the case of the latter, provide more input from the private sector.

Mr Parker admitted the council was experiencing difficulties in public transport (see page 5).

“A number of these difficulties are budget-related but there are also issues of value for money and it would be unfair to characterise all changes as being budget-driven.”

However, he was pessimistic about the impact of rising national debt on future council services.

“My own belief is we could face cuts of between eight and 12 per cent in 2011/12 and it is difficult to foresee that this will not hit both staff and services,” he said.

South of Scotland list MSP Christine Grahame (SNP) was just as pessimistic.

She said: “Tough times lie ahead and the situation will only be relieved once Scotland has achieved control over all the financial levers to ensure we protect local services and not rely on the unstable financial fluctuations originating in London,” said Ms Grahame.

Return to Local Press page.