An estimated 700 jobs will be lost from Fife Council over the next three years with no guarantees that there won’t be compulsory redundancies, the local authority’s leader Councillor Alex Rowley confirmed today.
Mr Rowley told The Courier that Fife Council would continue working with trade unions, and every effort would be made to retrain those who didn’t want to leave, as it strived to balance the books to tackle a budget gap of £92.6 million over the next three years.
Mr Rowley confirmed the predicted job losses as a special meeting of the full Fife Council approved the Labour administration’s revenue budget for 2014-17.
The Labour motion received 48 votes, with an SNP amendment receiving 24 votes and a Conservative amendment two votes.
The approved budget aims to take steps towards tackling an estimated budget gap of £4.85 million in 2014-15, £15.34 million in 2015-16 and rising to £92.6m by 2017-18.
Proposing what he said was a budget to help the poorest, Councillor Rowley said: “It cannot be right, it is not right that any child in Fife is born to fail. Education and social work staff can often tell from birth who will come to the attention of the social services and even who will go into the prison system. That is why we are pledging support to early years and related areas.”
Mr Rowley said the Fife SNP group had “no credibility” because they had refused to engage with Labour, unlike the other parties during the consultation process.
But SNP group leader Peter Grant said the financial gap facing Scottish local authorities would only worsen unless people voted ‘yes’ in the September 18 referendum on independence.
The 3.5-hour debate covered a range of topics and was dominated by concerns about the Fife Council social work deficit of £14m.
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