New Figures Reignite Row Over Aberdeen Council Budget Crisis

A fresh war of words broke out last night over Aberdeen City Council’s budget crisis after new figures revealed that the authority overspent its education and social work budgets by £220million over the last 10 years.

The blame game over who is responsible for the local authority’s precarious financial position was reignited by statistics showing large overspends in the council’s two biggest departmental budgets every year since 1997.

Figures obtained by the SNP under freedom of information show the council’s previous three administrations exceeded their government allocation for social work and education by £195.6million.

The figure rises to £219.9million when this year’s anticipated overspend is included.

Labour councillors said they were proud of their spending record on the vital services, which they had made priorities.

North East SNP MSP Maureen Watt attacked the “short-term thinking” of the two Labour administrations between 1997 to 2003 and of their Liberal Democrat-Conservative successor, which ran the city from 2003-07.

“Labour’s claims that they left the city in a financially sound position are blown clean out of the water by the fact that their last budget, just before they lost power in 2003, overspent on education and social work to the tune of over £20million,” said Ms Watt, the Scottish Government’s schools minister.

The figures show spending against government grant-aided expenditure (GAE) calculations, which are made for each council service based on factors such as population to ensure a similar standard in councils across the country.

It is up to local authorities to decide where to spend the money and GAE overspends are reduced in final budgets by measures such as council tax increases.

The figures reveal Labour overspent its government allocation for education and social work by £95.5million over its two terms and by £18.62million in 1997-98.

Opposition Labour group leader Len Ironside, who was in charge of the council between 1999 and 2003, said: “Labour has always taken great pride in our record of spending on social work and education, which was fully reflected in the quality of provision received by Aberdeen’s public. It is noticeable that we always balanced the books and had responsible reserves in place for a rainy day.”

The Lib Dem-Tory administration’s overspend against GAE for the two services was £100million, with £28.5million of this in 2004-05.

Councillor Kate Dean, leader of the previous Lib Dem coalition with the Tories and the post-2007 ruling alliance with the SNP, said: “This gives the lie to Labour’s claims they left the city’s finances in order.”

On December 17, councillors will slash services for a second time this year as the authority wrestles to restore its balances with the second wave of its £60million budget cuts. About £13million is likely to be cut from education and social work spending.