Representatives of Fife, Angus and Dundee City councils gave their reactions to the Chancellor’s announcement of spending cuts and how the new fiscal realities will affect the services offered by local authorities.
Fife Council leader Peter Grant yesterday maintained that customers will continue to come first, despite UK public spending facing cuts of around 19% over the next four years.
“Here in Fife we will still be investing more than £800 million in our public services and it’s important that we don’t lose sight of this,” he said.
“The Chancellor’s announcement today gives us some understanding however, of how severe the cuts will be UK-wide, although it will still be several weeks before we can gauge the exact impact on Fife.
“Our first priority continues to be the people who need our services the most and our budget decisions will reflect this.
“The challenge ahead is for us to balance the need for around £120 million savings by 2014, growing demand for services, the opportunities for efficiency and improvement and delivering on our priorities.
“Innovation has to be the key to how we move forward as we can’t pretend that we can achieve all the savings we need without making some radical changes to how we work and deliver services to Fifers.
“Often by changing the way we deliver a service we can save money while protecting or even improving the benefits to service users. We already have some great examples of employees rising to the challenge, and showing real innovation in the jobs they do.”
Mr Grant added there was no doubt some “difficult and unpopular” decisions lie ahead, but the council leader reiterated the importance of speaking to Fifers over the next months as the council moves through the budget process.
He continued, “By making sure there are ongoing conversations with our employees and local people we can look at ways of changing how we deliver services and understand better the impact that these changes may have.
“A new drive from November will help explain how we will take forward a Fife-wide conversation which will help inform our budget strategy and make sure that Fife continues to be a great place to live, work and visit.”
‘Too early…’Meanwhile, Fife Constabulary said it remains too early to say what impact the national cuts will have on policing in the region but a spokesman reiterated the force’s commitment to minimising the effect on frontline services.
“The exact impact upon policing and, in particular Fife Constabulary, is still unknown,” the spokesman said. “However, the force will continue to review all aspects of its business, identifying both opportunities and best practice, whilst taking into account anticipated budget cuts.
“A significant amount of work has been carried out over the past two years, including force re-structuring, strengthened community engagement, and enhanced partnership working and this has not only enabled the force to take policing closer to the community, but has been essential to maintaining performance and providing a solid base to respond to the challenges ahead.
“There can be no doubt that the scale of the cuts being faced will mean a reduction in the level and, potentially breadth, of service provided by the force.
“Fife Constabulary remains fully committed to ensuring a sustainable approach to delivering local community policing within Fife and there is an absolute determination to ensuring that services are available to be called upon.””Tough decisions”Angus Council leader Bob Myles has warned there will be “tough decisions” ahead for the county after the UK Government announced budget cuts across all corners of society.
The cuts made to Scotland’s available budget were less than the £1.2 billion that had been feared, bt the Comprehensive Spending Review will still leave the Scottish Government with a £900 million hole in its finances when it goes to draw up its own spending plans for the year ahead.
Councillor Myles has warned this means there will be “no escaping” the cuts in services that will come.
“We’ve been preparing for these cuts for some time and we know that the savings needed to address them will affect local services,” he said.
“Angus is in better shape than some other areas, but there is no escaping the fact that budget cuts of this scale mean we have some tough decisions to make about the services we deliver.
“The council has already made big savings £10 million over the past four years-by finding more efficient ways of working, but it will take more than efficiencies to deliver the savings needed next year and beyond.
“We now have to wait for the Scottish Government to announce its budget proposals that’s when we’ll find out in detail what the cuts will mean for Angus.”No relief for DundeeThe lower than expected cut in the amount of money Scotland will get from Westminster next year is unlikely to reduce the level of savings that Dundee City Council will have to make.
It will be several weeks yet before the detail of those allocations for next year is known but administration leader Ken Guild said he did not anticipate there would be any significant change to the £40 million of savings the council expects to make over the next three years.
Half the cuts some £20 million are expected next year alone, with another £10 million to be found in each of the two following years.
“I don’t see this (the comprehensive spending review announcement) making a material difference,” Mr Guild said. “The announcement only covers the block grant for next year and we don’t know what will be round the corner after that.”
Mr Guild said the council was on track to make the necessary savings without raising the council tax or significantly affecting front line services.
He said it looked as if the reduction in the Scottish budget would not be any worse than had been expected, but it still represented a sizeable cut to public expenditure in Scotland.
Liberal Democrat group leader Fraser Macpherson said the Scottish budget seemed to have fared better than expected. However, no-one yet knew what the effect on Dundee City Council was going to be.
He said the ball was now firmly in the court of Scottish Government finance secretary John Swinney to decide how the money would be allocated within Scotland and that should be done as soon as possible.
Photo courtesy of Stewart Lloyd-Jones.