Fife Council’s Labour leader has warned of over £12 million of cuts to local services and the loss of at least 90 local authority jobs.
Co-leader David Ross hit out at the Scottish Government’s allocation for local government, which he said was less than anticipated.
Mr Ross claimed it represented a reduction of more than 1% in the core grant, which would force Fife’s administration to find even more savings.
He also warned householders could face an increase in council tax of up to 4.84% as the authority tries to bridge the financial gap amid increasing demands on children and families services and health and social care.
The Scottish Government announced an increase of £494m for local government revenue spending in its budget on Wednesday but COSLA said when government commitments were factored in it left a cut to core budgets of £95m.
Mr Ross said: “We will still have to work through the detail but it looks as though for Fife it is slightly worse than we expected, with more than a 1% cut in the core grant.
“We will try to protect as many jobs as we can, as we have done in the past, but you can’t have that level of cuts without an impact on jobs and services.”
Mr Ross said the Fife Labour group had found around £6m of savings as it prepared its budget proposals for the coming year but would have to return to the drawing board, with just three weeks to go until Fife Council sets its budget.
Funding cuts in recent years have result in library closures, decreased school budgets and maintenance, reduced opening hours in leisure centres and recycling centres and cuts in road maintenance.
In addition to the budget gap, Mr Ross said both the council’s children’s and families service and health and social care partnership predicted overspends of around £10m.
He said: “This is set against a growing elderly population with increasing care needs and estimates that one in four children in Fife are living in households affected by poverty.
“Over recent years, the council has been using its reserves to offset overspends in services.
“It can no longer do this as its reserves are approaching the minimum acceptable level needed to deal with unexpected circumstances such as extreme cold weather, flooding emergencies, fires in public buildings or virus outbreaks.”
COSLA had made a plea for fair funding which would have brought an additional £32m to Fife.
A Scottish Government spokesperson insisted the budget provided a fair deal for councils.
“Taken together with the flexibility to increase council tax, this local government settlement gives councils an increase of revenue spending of up to 4.3% in real terms to deliver local services.
“Despite constraints through a decade of UK austerity and the uncertainty caused by Brexit, we are investing in the fairer and more equal society all of us would like to see.”
