South Lanarkshire councillors are expected to vote on the upcoming budget tomorrow amid uncertainty.
At the full council meeting which is scheduled to take place on February 22, , elected members will set the budget for the upcoming financial year.
Council leader Joe Fagan has already warned that it will be the volatile year there has ever been for councils setting budgets.
Options have been put forward for councillors to review and vote on.
Other political groups may also put forward their own amendments, and the SNP group have announced that they will present an alternative budget proposal.
Current proposals include two options to address the budget gap.
A budget gap of £16.318 million was identified, but through savings and solutions adding up to £7.5 million, there is a revised budget shortfall of £8.818million which will be required to be closed and is reflected in the proposals.
Options from include increasing the level of Council Tax and/or introducing savings proposals.
Firstly, the council outlined that increasing Council Tax would mean the council could reduce the level of cuts needed to balance the upcoming budget.
Currently, the council’s band D rate at 2022/2023 levels is the lowest for mainland Scotland, and increasing the rate would allow the council to reduce the cuts required to balance the upcoming budget. Each one per cent increase in Band D would generate £1.42 million for the council.
The council have also outlined a range of saving proposals, which could be introduced.
Those include a range of measures to save money and generate money for the council.
A range of options have been outlined, including removing primary four and five school meals. Children entitled to free meals would still receive them but there is no statutory requirement to provide free meals for these groups. Removing this would mean the council would achieve a saving of around £840,000.
Another option includes increasing the charge of secondary school meals to £2.40 which is the average charge across all Scottish Local Authorities. This would generate a saving of £350,000.
The council also proposes to introduce a £2 charge for parking at key attractions across various council services including South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture attractions, examples include Tinto Hill, Chatelherault Country Park, Calderglen Country Park and James Hamilton Heritage Park. This would generate around £200,000.
Another option proposed is to reduce the provision of access to period products in schools and communities. This is a legislative requirement for the council to provide, but the council will still ensure legislative obligations are met. This would create a saving of £0.100 million.
The council also proposes to remove the first free bulk uplift of items and introduce a charge of £37.50 for all requests. This would generate a saving of £0.395 million.
An increased charge for cremations has also been proposed, increasing it to £808.33 which would make an additional income of £0.200 million.
As well as this, the council is considering reducing the level of funding for summer programmes for children, this would potentially achieve a saving of £0.577 million.
And plans to reduce the daily holiday support payment by 10 per cent have also been proposed. Scottish Government funding was provided to allow payments for free school meals in holiday periods to eligible children; the council is exploring options to revisit the policy and reduce the daily payment from £2.50 to £2.25 this would generate a saving of £0.149 million.
From all of the cuts in the savings proposal, the council could free up a total of £13.094 million.
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