West Lothian will get almost £2m from the Scottish Government to spend on its town centres.
But Bathgate has questioned the fairness of how the pot has been divided.
The council has used the government calculation formula for the funding, which defines a town as any place which has 1000 or more residents. That equates to 23 towns in West Lothian.
While outwardly fair, that division of the cash creates anomalies. With a population of 23,559 Bathgate will get £161,674. Greenrigg, with a population of only 1066, gets £45,506.
That diversity of amount per person was first questioned at Bathgate’s local area committee and, the following day, by Bathgate’s Tory councillor Charles Kennedy at the council executive.
At the meeting of the executive Councillor Kennedy raised an amendment stating: “The grants distribution, as proposed, is unfair in the extreme and the diversity of amounts per head of population is so disparate as to be unacceptable.”
He questioned the fairness of the scheme which had a £50 per head difference in funding between neighbouring wards in East and South Livingston.
Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick said: “We’ve all heard about how the Livingstons, the Bathgates, the Linlithgows get everything and the villages get nothing. This way the villages will get something.”
Chief executive Graham Hope said the scheme sought to reflect funding for those communities which had helped generate that funding in the first place.
“There will always be anomalies,” he added.
At a vote Councillor Kennedy’s amendment was defeated 9-4.
