YOU report Cosla's reaction to Derek Mackay's budget ("Councils say Derek Mackay's Budget is the 'final nail' in local services, The Herald, December 18). If I can illustrate from my own experience. I have been a councillor in North Ayrshire for 12 years. Every year in that time our budget has been cut, first by freezing the Council Tax and enforcing “flat cash" settlements then, from 2010/11, a deadly mix of Westminster and Holyrood austerity.
At the full council meeting of November, we received a report from our Finance Officer showing that our budget was £92 million less than it needed to be to meet our pressures, versus the situation in 2010/11. Add to that the effects of the SNP's council tax freeze from 2007, and the sum is nearer £100m. That's £100m short of what North Ayrshire Council needs to deliver vital services to the people of North Ayrshire to the level they expect and deserve.
In his Budget speech Mr Mackay suggested that there was an increase in Council budgets, but there isn't – there is a cut. That's another cut in a succession of cuts from the SNP. According to Cosla, the total cut is £273m for 2019/20 but including ring-fenced amounts, the real impact is around £500m. So council budgets around the country will be cut once again.
We all suffer from these cuts. Cuts make it more difficult to address potholes in our roads, teacher shortages in our schools, care shortages for our ill, elderly or infirm. They make it difficult to find the money to invest in local causes: community centres, town centres, town halls, libraries, roads and pavements. The other main victims are council workers whose jobs have been cut and whose wages have fallen behind since the SNP came to power in 2007. Mr Mackay denies the cuts exist, but they do, and they are destroying our local infrastructure and vital services.
One particular problem, which I find very frustrating, is that our SNP councillors in North Ayrshire refuse to fight the cuts from the SNP at Holyrood, a situation which I believe also exists in other councils. Can I suggest that anyone who depends on council services, or has relatives or neighbours who depend on these services, write to your local SNP Group of councillors at your local council offices demanding they oppose any further cuts to our budget and to your services? It will register your concerns and, who knows, it might even give SNP councillors across Scotland a bit of backbone to fight for the people who voted for them, rather than just cave in to their own party leadership in Edinburgh.
Alex Gallagher,
Labour Councillor, Ward 8, North Ayrshire Council,
12 Phillips Avenue, Largs.
I READ with great interest and growing amazement Green MSP Patrick Harvie's comments on the SNP's proposed Budget. Apparently the cuts "will force councils to slash frontline services". I wonder if these are the same services which have been "slashed" in the last two SNP Budgets which he and his Green colleagues have supported and allowed to be passed? They will probably be thrown a few bones from the table and allow this one to be passed as well.
How can a party like the Greens wield so much leverage having gathered so few votes?
Campbell McDiarmid,
27 Eldon Street, Greenock.
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