Up to 900 council workers in Fife could lose their jobs as a result of cuts in the new year, it has been claimed.
While Fife Council is still working through the figures, the job losses are estimates based on the 15,000 posts Cosla believes will go across Scotland as a result of John Swinney’s budget.
Depute leader Lesley Laird, who highlighted the 900 figure, admitted the council is now facing a huge challenge to set a budget that will minimise the impact on jobs and services on February 11.
“The real concern here is that across Scotland people are undoubtedly going to lose their jobs as a direct result of the choices that John Swinney has made,” she said.
“Undoubtedly services that people rely on today may not be able to continue or continue in the way they are delivered now.
“The SNP’s constant response is that any scrutiny of their record is simply ‘SNP bad’ or anti-Scottish, but when you have been in charge for eight years then you have to expect people to be asking questions especially when so many areas that they are directly responsible for are now causing concern.”
Council leader David Ross has also written to Fife’s Parliamentarians urging them to take Mr Swinney to task, saying the cut in Fife’s grant had “come out of the blue”.
“Cuts by the Tory Government in Westminster are undoubtedly having a negative impact on Fife, but the Chancellor’s recent UK budget wasn’t quite as bad as everyone was expecting,” he said.
“So it’s difficult to understand why Mr Swinney’s budget is so much worse than predicted for local councils in Scotland.”
SNP councillor David Alexander hit back though, accusing Labour of going “over the top” with budget estimates.
“Labour, knowingly, overstated the cuts by £9.45 million and tried to prevent this information becoming public,” he said.
“They also failed to mention the £10 million impact of Westminster’s decision to end national insurance contracting out.
“In reality, only a fraction of the savings required to balance the books are down to the settlement from the Scottish Government for 2016/17, most are due to Fife Council decisions and Westminster’s raid on national insurance.
“This is obviously not quite the picture Labour want the people of Fife to see, particularly when NHS Fife has seen its budget rise by £29.5 million to over £604 million and Fife will also benefit from a share of the £250 million transformative new investment in the integration of health and social care services.
“Fife will also benefit from a share of the £90 million increase in affordable housing.”