Axe Falls On Jobs As Councils Bring In The Tax Freeze

HUNDREDS of jobs will be lost to ensure the SNP election commitment to freeze council tax is met, it emerged yesterday, as more than half of Scotland’s local authorities announced their budgets.

Around 80% of the population will not have their council tax increased, with 26 councils confirming that levels will be frozen in their areas, in line with the Scottish Government’s pledge to maintain bills at last year’s levels.

Finance Secretary John Swinney has made a £70m funding package available to deliver the manifesto commitment this year.

Nineteen councils set their budgets yesterday and confirmed the council tax freeze, but several admitted that they would shed jobs, including teaching posts, in order to pay for the tax freeze.

Scottish Borders Council said that to make savings of £4.4m and freeze council tax, it will be shedding jobs across its housing, social work, planning and regeneration departments. Cuts in teaching will be met by retirement and replacement by younger, cheaper teachers.

Council chiefs in Dundee, Highland, Fife, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire warned they would have to lose posts. North and South Lanarkshire insisted that no jobs will go.

The Herald revealed on Wednesday that Glasgow City Council was shedding more than 400 posts to meet the tax freeze.

Labour said vulnerable groups would lose out in order to meet the government’s pledge.

Iain Gray, Labour’s Shadow Finance Secretary, said: “It is time that the SNP came clean over their attack on public services and admitted that vulnerable people and hard-working families will see the services and facilities they use hit hard.”

Mr Swinney welcomed the commitment. He said: “We have given local government the opportunity to deliver the services their constituents deserve by providing record funding and giving councils more freedom to spend their money to meet local needs and deliver national priorities.”

As household budgets across Scotland reap the benefits of the populist SNP commitment to freeze council tax bills, the true cost of the policy was being counted yesterday in terms of jobs, service reductions and increased service charges.

Despite a financial package to soften the blow of inflation, all but a handful of local authorities have been forced into some draconian, and well-disguised, measures to balance the books.

As councils announced their spending plans, there was much back-slapping that their citizens would not be paying any more when bills kick in in April, but when probed, the admissions of “natural wastage” and “efficiency savings” were revealed.

In more blunt parlance this amounts to little more than job culls and service cuts.

With Glasgow setting the trend, several others confirmed that jobs would go.

Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, South Ayrshire, Fife, Aberdeen, Dundee, Borders and Highland all admitted jobs would be lost, although compulsory redundancies were thought unlikely.

In Aberdeen, leisure facilities face reduced operating hours with the potential closure of swimming baths.

Lewis Macdonald, Labour MSP for Aberdeen Central, said: “SNP councillors and their administration partners have decided to cut vital services in Aberdeen in an attempt to balance the books.

“Cuts are set to hit older people, young families and the homeless, the very people who need public services the most.”

The Liberal Democrat/ Conservative administration in neighbouring Aberdeenshire said the freeze has been achieved without making cuts to services or jobs.

Scottish Borders Council will be shedding jobs across its housing, social work, planning and regeneration departments, reducing staffing costs in teaching through retirement and replacement by younger, cheaper teachers, cutting overtime payments, and using trainees in some sections of the authority.

The council, which has a budget of £249m for the next financial year, has yet to specify how many posts will go but insists it will be done through “natural wastage” rather than compulsory redundancies.

Borders Council deputy leader Neil Calvert said: “We have come up with a good plan to maintain and improve our services, while making efficiency savings of £4.4m, which will be re-invested in our services.”

Up to 100 posts could be lost in East Renfrewshire through voluntary redund-ancy, retirements and not filling vacant posts to help with £900,000 of savings.

Renfrewshire will also lose staff, with numbers still being worked on, but redeployment and voluntary redundancy are mooted.

Highland Council’s budget of £568.6m includes an extra £25.6m of ring-fenced money from central government. The budget comes with a package of cuts totalling £12.7m across the council.

Up to 130 jobs are expected to go either through not filling posts, early retirement or voluntary redundancy, with exact details to be clarified, but education expected to be worst-affected.

Andrew Stewart, regional secretary of the EIS, said: “At this precise moment we do not have a firm number. But I was advised at a briefing last week that it would be around 40 teaching posts and around 90 non-teaching posts.”

Fife Council has a savings programme of £12m, including a reduction in staff of between 20 and 30 posts.

Council leader Peter Grant said the deal was good for Fife and the budget allowed the council to invest in services. In Dundee, 12 jobs are to go, with education providing savings.

Moray Council will raise an additional £174,000 by increasing leisure and community centre charges, and car parking charges will bring in an extra £100,000.

Six councils, including Edinburgh and Stirling, have still to set their budgets.