Aberdeen City Council’s decision to make £27m of cuts as well as a council tax freeze has led to angry reaction.

Funding is being withdrawn from several care organisations, and social work services, sports centres and libraries will also be affected. The art deco Bon Accord Baths – the city’s oldest pool – is to close down, as is the children’s farm at Doonies.

Kate Dean, leader of the Lib Dem and SNP administration, admitted they had been faced with difficult choices.

She told BBC Scotland: “This is not what any of us came in to local government to do. “Some hard decisions have had to be made. We have tried to provide as much as we can.”

The level of council tax was frozen, as it was in Aberdeenshire, Moray, Orkney and Shetland. However, Aberdeen’s opposition Labour leader Len Ironside did not accept the administration’s arithmetic.

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.

LAST year, more than 3000 calls were made to the Fife Domestic and Sexual Abuse Partnership, most of which involved children in some way.

A London-based organisation which specialises in tackling gang culture has been hired in Glasgow to help the city get a handle on its own problems of conflict and violence among young people.

HEARTS FC have teamed up with a council’s youth justice team to tackle young offending in the region.

Scotland’s prison population has reached an all-time high, according to the latest figures. A total of 7609 prisoners were in custody last Friday, around 1000 above capacity and nearly 20% more than 10 years ago.

A service that aims to tackle ill-health in Scotland’s workplaces was launched in Dundee yesterday.

FOUR Chinese women trafficked into Scotland by gangs to work in the sex industry have been found during a series of raids by police.

A major charity for carers and users of community care services in the Highlands has warned that it will close if local authority funding is withdrawn.

An Aberdeen charity for the homeless fears it will have to close four of its centres if it loses council funding.