Glasgow City Councils has warned that it could have to make cuts and savings of £60m following the Scottish Budget announcement.
Glasgow City Council leader Frank McAveety told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland that cuts to core local government funding means the local authority is facing a reduction of £60m-£70m this year.
He added that the decision to increase council tax would benefit more affluent local authorities but would only raise around £6m for Glasgow.
Aberdeen and Fife Councils have also said that they will have less money, with Fife claiming it will have to make savings of £30m.
Mr McAveety told Good Morning Scotland said: "We're talking about a reduction of £60-£70m this year, even with the three per cent. So we're talking about the maximum raising from that of about £6m, so there's a massive gulf.
"The truth of the matter is that local government services will have less money this year again and that's an ongoing thing for Glasgow and the minister should be ashamed of himself."
Finance minister Derek Mackay told Holyrood that he would be investing an extra £240m in local services when he announced his first Scottish Budget yesterday. However, opponents have claimed that there will actually be a £300m fall in funding for councils.
The draft budget revealed that the amount of money councils will receive from the Scottish Government will fall to just under £9.65bn in 2017-18. However, a council tax rise is expected to generate additional funding. Local authorities will also be able to increase council tax by an additional three per cent if they wish to do so.
Money to close the school attainment gap will also now be paid directly from the Government to head teachers.
Mr Mackay told BBC Reporting Scotland that the 'totality' of funds now available to councils would result in more funding.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel