SCOTLAND'S largest council is facing cuts and savings in excess of £100 million over the next three years.
Finance bosses at Glasgow City Council have published their forecast for the year 2015/2016, with a funding gap of £28.9m.
The authority's leadership has warned deeper cuts will come down the line in the two years after that, with predictions they will be worse than any previous 24-month period.
It is understood £100m of cuts between 2016 and 2018 is not an unrealistic figure.
The city is the latest authority to forecast a bleak financial outlook, with leading union Unison now warning that, despite a spending squeeze since 2008, 60 per cent of cuts are still to come across the public sector.
The council says part of the cuts for the next year follow a £13m reduction in its block grant from Holyrood.
Political leaders will decide between now and February how to bridge the gap for the next 12 months. Sources claim job losses are not being considered for the next year but a trawl for voluntary redundancies in the following two could not be ruled out.
Scotland is expected to see its overall cash settlement from Westminster reduced following the UK Government's next spending review, with the "austerity targets" failing to make a dent in the overall national debt.
But Glasgow's leader, Labour's Gordon Matheson, has directed his ire at the Scottish Government, insisting the SNP's John Swinney rather than Chancellor George Osborne decides how much the city receives.
Mr Matheson said: "Tough as they are, we will meet next year's challenges, however the Scottish Government has saved the really big cuts for the two or three years after 2015. It's not good enough for them to continue to pretend everything's fine."
He added the SNP Government had "subjected the people of Glasgow to year after year of disproportionate cuts".
Leading local government experts have warned of a rush of councils announcing significant budget deficits in the months ahead. Professor Richard Kerley of Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University said "sticking plasters" had been placed over issues such as local government financing pre-referendum, with the council tax freeze set to become a major political issue in the next 18 months.
On Tuesday Highland Council said it could shed up to 1,000 jobs to help save £64m over the next five years, with cuts proposed including reducing the primary school day, cutting teacher numbers and taxes on tourists.
Renfrewshire declared earlier this month it would need to make cuts of about £30m up until 2018, while West Lothian Council is also facing a £30m-plus financial black hole in the coming three years.
A Unison spokesman said: "Things are set to get worse for families and for public services. Our report looking at the pressure on the Scottish Budget as a result of austerity measures from Westminster shows 60 per cent of revenue cuts are still to come.
"This announcement by Glasgow is but the latest instalment being implemented by local authorities. Already 50,000 public service jobs have been lost, the highest proportion from local government, with a further 60,000 forecast to go."
An SNP group spokesman said: "The ideological pursuit of austerity by both Conservatives and Labour had has left Glasgow facing some unpalatable decisions on services. These decisions are only made harder by the tens of millions wasted by Labour in recent years. Glasgow and Scotland desperately needs the extra powers promised in the so-called vow to help protect it from the worst of these cuts."
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