Dumfries and Galloway Council’s budget settlement was yesterday labelled “a real nightmare before Christmas”.
Council leader Elaine Murray claims the authority will be left facing a £11.7 million shortfall next year.
The deal was contained in the Scottish Government budget, which was presented at Holyrood on December 9 by the SNP-Green administration.
However, it wasn’t until Tuesday of this week that local authorities found out how much they would receive.
And although the Scottish Government claims the settlement represents a 4.5 per cent increase on this year, Dr Murray says it will mean service cuts and council tax rises.
She said: “The SNP-Green Scottish Government waited nearly two weeks to tell councils their funding for next year because they wanted to bury bad news just before Christmas.
“But this has turned out to be a real nightmare before Christmas and the worst budget settlement in living memory.
“The undeniable brutal fact is we face a £11.7 million shortfall just to stand still. This comes on top of a decade of cuts from the government, and you simply have to ask how much more abuse local services can take from government before they grind to a halt.”
The deal was also blasted by South Scotland Labour MSP, Colin Smyth.
He said: “This eye watering cut to the council’s budget will mean fewer local services but more council tax rises for hardworking local families. That will be tough for local people to take at a time they already face a cost of living crisis with spiralling energy and food bills.”
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities claims the settlement represents a real-term funding cut to Scotland’s 32 councils totalling £371 million.
They now plan “to take the case for a better financial settlement directly to the First Minister as a matter of urgency”.
“This figure is extremely selective as it ignores almost £1.4 billion of other funding for joint priorities within the overall local government finance settlement of over £12.5 billion. The Scottish budget provides revenue funding amounting to over £11.8 billion - a cash increase of £855.4 million and a real terms increase of £543.6 million.
“Despite the continued economic uncertainty facing us all as a result of the pandemic, we are treating councils fairly and providing a real terms increase of over five per cent to local authority budgets for the coming year. Councils themselves asked for financial flexibilities this year such as the ability to take their own local decisions on raising council tax, which we were pleased to provide.”
