A RAFT of Scotland's councils have unveiled their spending and savings plans for at least the next year as town halls attempt to balance their books in the face of cutbacks.
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Borders, Highlands, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire are among those to have outlined their budgets in the past 48 hours, with council tax again frozen despite ever dwindling cash resources. It comes as MSPs rubber-stamp the Scottish Government's spending plans for local authorities.
The share of money was endorsed in a 72 to 36 vote one day after the overall Budget was passed at Holyrood.
In Glasgow, the drama of last year's attempted coup at the budget was absent and the spending and £70 million savings and cuts options passed, with only a protest against the closure of school swimming pools and SNP attempts to halt charges for alarms for the elderly disrupting it being passed.
The budget will see increased parking, nursery and school meal charges, major cuts to schools and social care budgets and a boost in the number of municipal funerals as it aims to balance the books, with a major investment also in the city's roads.
Highland Council announced savings of almost £24m over the next two years. It expects to shed more than 140 full-time equivalent posts and cut funding to grant aided bodies by 3%.
The cuts will be made after councillors agreed 40 votes to 29 to set the council's budgets at £548m for 2013-14 and £547m 2014-15. Independent councillors had urged the SNP, Labour and Liberal Democrat ruling administration to use money held in reserve to ease the cuts.
In East Renfrewshire, one of the key decisions was reducing the number of primary one teachers over the next two years, to save £866,000, reviewing management and administrative staff to save a further £793,000, cutting staff numbers at sports centres and replacing a number of pre-five teachers with nursery nurses.
The council, which routinely tops the school league tables, also plans to cut free fruit from primary four to sevens, review staff terms and conditions and not renew contracts for foreign language assistants to help find £11m in savings for 2013/14 to 2014/15.
In Edinburgh, the SNP-Labour coalition, faced with a £14m funding gap over the next year, approved a series of cash generators, savings and cuts to balance the books.
Among these are plans to increase the charge for entrance to the Scott and Nelson Monuments from £3 to £4 and eventually £5 by 2017, as well as ending free provision of toilet facilities and charging more for parking.
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