Local MSP John Lamont has slammed the Scottish Government for cutting SBC’s budget by £8.5m, even though the Government has more money to spend next year.
A new paper produced by the Scottish Parliament’s independent Information Centre (SPICe) concludes that overall local authority funding is set to fall by £369m in real terms, a cut of 4%. Scottish Borders Council will have £8.5m less to spend in 2017-18 compared to this year, a cut of 4.3%. SPICe had also earlier pointed out that the overall Scottish Government budget has risen by 2.5% in cash terms and 1% in real terms.
The Scottish Government had tried to claim that local councils are being given more money, however this has been disproved by both by SPICe and by other experts who pointed out that the SNP had included spending on health and social care in both the NHS and the local government budgets.
The latest cut to SBC’s budget comes after the SNP slashed the budget by £7m last year.
Local MSP John Lamont has said the figures show the only ones to blame for the difficult decisions councils are now faced with is the SNP who have decided to slash funding for local services, despite having more money to spend.
John Lamont MSP said: “For years we have all been told that it’s all Westminster’s fault that difficult decisions on local services are having to be made. The reality is that it is the SNP who have chosen to slash council budgets, even though the overall amount of money they have to spend is going up.
“Scottish Borders Council are already having to cut local services after having their budget slashed by £7million this year. A further £8.5million cut will have real implications for our schools, roads and bin services.”
John added: “What makes this worse is that the Scottish Government tried to hide the fact that it’s overall budget was going up but that it was cutting local government funding by double counting NHS spending. It’s time for the SNP to face up to reality, that they alone are responsible for cutting local services.”