Troubled Aberdeen Council Backs £24.5m Cuts Plan

Aberdeen City Council has rubber-stamped a £24.5m package of cuts as it struggles to overcome its financial crisis.

The cuts include almost £6m from the education budget and £8.5m from the social work budget and around 400 jobs will go including more than 200 classroom assistants.

A last-minute bid by the Labour group on the council to delay any savings decisions while an attempt was made to get a 5% increase in the funding settlement from the Scottish Government was rejected by the Liberal Democrat SNP administration.

The cradle-to-grave cuts range from a reduction in provision for special needs children and closing libraries to increasing funeral charges.

A late amendment to the budget proposals by the administration was an increase in parking charges. Residents who currently pay £50 for a parking pass for their own car and the same for a pass for visitors will have to pay £80 for the first pass and £120 for the second.

Proposing the budget councillor Kevin Stewart, the SNP group leader and deputy council leader, said: “This is a tough budget but it is something we have to do to make sure our city gets back on a firm footing.”

He revealed that minutes before the meeting started the Scottish Government had given its consent for the council to borrow money to pay off hundreds of staff. The council will be allowed to use its capital budget to pay almost £11.7m in staff severance costs. Both he and councillor Kate Dean, the Liberal Democrat council leader, attacked the Labour Group for failing to put forward an alternative budget.

Councillor Dean called the Labour amendment to delay a “fudge.”

“The cake in terms of Scottish block funding has already been cut and I would love for the Labour group to tell me whose slice we should start to take bits off.”

Councillor Len Ironside, Labour Group leader, urged that the council have “one last kick at the door” by asking the government for the 5% “compensatory token addition pending the promised 2011 review”.

“I am in politics to improve the lot of the ordinary people, not to reduce, or in some cases destroy, their quality of life,” he said.

The Labour amendment was defeated by an amendment of Conservative changes which in turn was beaten by the administration proposals by 20 votes to five with 13 no votes. Four of the non votes are understood to have been Liberal Democrat councillors unhappy with the cuts.