Tomorrow I will move what I
reckon is my eighth budget as Council Leader. Over the years they have become
progressively more challenging and this year’s budget is arguably the toughest
to date.
As readers will know, the Council
has been conducting an extensive budget savings consultation over the last few
months. The feedback we have received from the public and staff - via the
online budget simulator, community events, the citizen’s panel, focus groups,
our dedicated ‘Yoursay’ website and emails and letters - has greatly assisted
the deliberations of our cross-party members’ budget working group.
I would like to thank all those
members of the public and staff who responded to the consultation. I would also
like to record my appreciation for the constructive role played once again by
the Council’s trade union representatives in informing the decisions to be
taken by elected members.
For the first time tomorrow I
will be moving detailed proposals that have been agreed in advance by all of
the Council’s political groups and independent councillors following lengthy
debate and discussion at seven meetings of the budget working group, which
lasted well over 20 hours in total. I think this shows how seriously elected
members take our responsibilities for making the best decisions in the
interests of the community.
The Council will be setting a
firm budget for financial year 2015/16 and an indicative budget for financial
year 2016/17.
As I have said previously, we
don’t know at this stage the level of grant funding we will receive from the
Scottish Government for 2016/17 so rather than press ahead and make the
estimated £7.4m worth of savings originally recommended by officers we have
agreed savings totalling £4.1m by 2016/17 and the temporary use of £3.3m of reserves
to balance the budget.
Currently officers are
anticipating that the Scottish Government will cut our funding by £2.6m in
2016/17. If they were to give us the same level of funding as we are receiving
for 2015/16 that would reduce the further savings required to balance the
budget to £0.7m, which would mean we could avoid making most of the very
difficult savings that many of those who responded to the consultation were
opposed to.
The cross-party members’ budget
working will continue to meet after the budget is set and will make further
proposals to the Council as additional information becomes available on things
like future government funding; staff pay awards; and general inflationary
pressures.
The savings figures don’t of
course tell the full story of the Council’s budget. We will still be spending well
over £200m a year on delivering services and investing in our communities.
Our school estate programme is
continuing with the completion of the refurbishments of Ardgowan and St John’s
Primaries and work starting on the refurbishment of Kilmacolm Primary and a new
build for St Patrick’s Primary. Funding has been earmarked for new community
facilities in Inverkip, Woodhall and Broomhill and for the refurbishment of
Ravenscraig Sports Centre.
Plans are in place to build two new children’s homes
in Greenock and Port Glasgow to replace the outdated existing homes.
We are continuing to invest in
regeneration projects in Greenock, Gourock and Port Glasgow and over the next
two years we plan to spend over £16m on improving our roads, footways and
street lighting and tackling the area’s flooding problems.
These are challenging times
indeed for the Council but as you can see we are still ambitious to make
Inverclyde a better place for us all to live.
