Labour councillors on Glasgow City Council are being urged to rebel over controversial plans to close three day centres for people with learning disabilities – with opponents calling for an alternative budget to save them.
The Glasgow SNP group says it will protect the centres using money redirected from the failed George Square redevelopment, but the city's Labour group is thought to be looking for its own alternatives.
The council announced in November that it wished to close the centres, arguing that users would be better served by more personalised services.
However, carers and service users have been vocal in opposition to the plans and last month the council's own Carer's Champion, Dr Christopher Mason, warned that consultation on the plans had been insufficient and called for a decision to be postponed and proposed a city wide review of learning disability services.
Ahead of the city's budget meeting on Thursday, Glasgow SNP social work spokeswoman councillor Susan Aitken said funds had been indentified to support the most vulnerable people in the city.
She said: "We have found resources to renovate our learning disability day care centres. We will do this by redirecting capital resources earmarked for the failed George Square redevelopment."
She said the alternative budget would allow for a full consultation with users and carers and claimed it would allow it to reverse the introduction of charges for community alarms.
The Herald understands there is mounting opposition to the closure plans among Labour councillors which could see a U-turn, with meetings held recently about how the administration can potentially avoid a closure decision.
Senior sources have said the political head of social work, councillor Matt Kerr, has been taking soundings from colleagues.
One possible get-out is to kick the plans into the long grass by agreeing to Mr Mason's recommendations.
The weakened position of the council leader Gordon Matheson, after revelations about his private life and his role in the fiasco around the cancellation of a competition to redesign George Square has also led to pressure for the centres to be given a reprieve.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article