Dumfries & Galloway Council In The Red Following Social Work Overspend

Dumfries and Galloway need to make cuts of £12 million over the next three years to bring the council’s budget out of the red.

Labour Councillor Colin Smyth said that proposed cuts would not have been necessary had the Conservative and SNP administration made more effort to get additional funding from the Scottish Government to overcome the shortfall.

He told the Dumfries and Galloway Standard: “The audit report has highlighted a huge number of issues this council administration need to get a grip of, in particular the projected overspend in social work which is increasing by the day, and the huge losses in the provision of service such as homecare, caused by the failure to provide adequate funding.

“It really is time that the Tory and SNP run council stood up for our region, banged on the door of the First Minister in his plush Edinburgh house and demanded a fair share of funding for our region.”

The councillor also criticised the government for not providing Dumfries and Galloway with the same level of financial settlement as other regions over the last year.

He said: “This comes at a time when the Scottish Government have dumped new responsibilities on the council, without any new funding. Had we got the same deal as other parts of Scotland our region would have received over £3 million extra this year alone.”

Council Leader Ivor Hyslop defended the Conservatives saying the current budget defecit is the fault of the previous Labour administration.

He said: “I think the first point that you need to look at is the period of time that we are looking at for the budget is 2006 to 2007. We inherited that budget from the previous administration. That is what we have to deal with.

“It’s been difficult to deal with that budget but we have been doing the best we can.”