Fife Council Budget 20215

Fife Today

The views of the party leaders ahead of this month's budget debate

Transcript

00:00Life Council leaders are due to set the budget in just a few weeks time and it's

00:04going to be a challenging year. I've spoken to all four group leaders about

00:07their proposals and here's what they have to say.

00:09Well we're still working through our proposals for the budget this year and it's a very difficult year.

00:16There's a significant gap still between the cost of continuing our services and the funding that we're going to have available

00:27and we're trying to close that gap and the only two ways of doing that are either by making savings and cuts to services

00:36or by an increase in the council tax and we're looking at a balance between both.

00:43In terms of the budget gap, it was originally set at £11.6 million that we need to find

00:51but on top of that there are a number of other pressures

00:54so there is a significant overspend this year in health and social care

00:58and we expect that to be continued into the next year

01:02and that will have to be met by ourselves and our partners NHS Fife.

01:07The other big pressure is on our capital programme.

01:12We set a capital programme, maintaining our assets, things like roads, schools, other buildings and facilities.

01:22We set a 10 year capital programme.

01:24So when we set this the last time, since then, costs, particularly construction costs, have gone up considerably

01:35and similarly we pay for this, we take out loans, just like a mortgage.

01:43We take out a loan for this and we pay that back over the lifetime of the asset

01:49but unfortunately the loan charges, the interest rates, haven't come down as fast as were being predicted

01:55so we're looking to reduce our capital plan over the next 10 years by about 20%

02:03which is a huge amount of money, £200 million.

02:06So we're still struggling to actually square the circle in terms of our budget

02:16and basically we'll be looking at a combination of savings from services and a rise in council tax

02:23and at the moment we're still looking at up to 10% of a rise in council tax.

02:30That isn't unusual across Scotland.

02:34There are a number of other authorities that are looking at that level of council tax

02:40and it's a result of the past freezes in council tax that we've seen over the past decade really

02:51that even with a slightly better settlement from the Scottish Government this year than we were expecting

02:59it doesn't make up for years of underfunding in the past.

03:05So this is a pretty challenging budget that we've got at the moment

03:09and we're currently working through a number of scenarios that hopefully we'll balance at the end of the day.

03:15There are big challenges around the capital plan

03:18which is significantly oversupplied at the moment because of long-term inflation

03:23that's been high costs on the Belgian trade in particular

03:25and interest rates and the cost of borrowing is higher than council officers had assumed

03:30so there are issues in terms of that which are having an impact on the revenue account or the revenue budget.

03:36Our aims predominantly are to protect council tax rises and to protect teacher numbers

03:41that's two aims that we're hoping to achieve when we get to the end of deliberations

03:46and there are challenges around that the way that we've just discussed in terms of the capital plan.

03:52But we're determined, I know I've seen Councillor Ross in the paper just recently

03:57batting about a figure of 10% nearly, that would be unacceptable to us

04:01and we're looking to try and bring that figure down quite a bit if we can

04:05and that's what our aim is and that's what we're working hard to do just now.

04:08Overall in terms of teacher numbers I was quite struck at the EIS meeting

04:12in terms of that investment versus some other types of investment

04:16and we've always been pretty clear that we're looking to make sure that teacher numbers are protected

04:21and indeed hopefully increased as well because I don't see how we can address the issues

04:27within the education which are varied and well documented as well.

04:32I don't see how we could address those issues with less teachers.

04:36I think we need more teachers and more investment in teaching

04:39and that's what we're certainly, it's going to be difficult in this budget setting

04:43but we have had the additional money from the Scottish Government both on teacher numbers

04:48and additional support so we would hope that gets invested properly here in the council

04:52and we are also looking very clearly to try and protect the education budget as a whole

04:58so that's something we've put on the record and we will follow through on.

05:02So it is a challenge, we're still to get to the bottom of the numbers

05:06and you'll see we're working day and night to try and get to that firm proposal

05:11that we could put forward as a budget in the Chamber in a couple of weeks' time

05:15but the key priority for us, keep council tax rises to a minimum, protect teacher numbers

05:20and that's hopefully what we'll do.

05:22Okay, so I guess the budget situation from my group's perspective is

05:26we are well aware of the financial constraints that are going to be in place

05:32we know there's more money has come from the UK Government this year

05:36however we know that not all of that is going to be passed on

05:40from the Scottish Government to local authorities

05:43and for us that means obviously looking at what our group's priorities are

05:49what the council's priorities have to be and balancing that against

05:54I guess the fact that we've got the national insurance increase in contributions for employers

06:01which is not going to be fully covered so how do we balance that

06:04and also of course we've got the big question of the council tax

06:08we had a Scottish Government freeze on the council tax for over a decade

06:12and of course the result of that is that that builds up

06:14and now we've got more of a pressure that's coming in there

06:16so I guess in terms of my group's priorities

06:20the first thing really for myself which I've been talking about for over a year now

06:24is really in terms of education and the rollout of one-to-one devices

06:28for our young people to ensure they're not left behind

06:30we know other local authorities are doing this

06:32we know the impact it's now having on attainment

06:34so that's going to cost a lot, there's no doubt about that

06:37but I think we have to definitely move forward with that

06:40so in terms of budget proposals I'll be wanting to see firm commitment

06:44I guess in the administration proposals for that

06:47we're also keen to see that funding around roads is maintained

06:53because our roads here in Fife are not actually as bad as in a lot of parts of the country

06:57I know that from driving around elsewhere

06:59however that's really been because we've continued to see money put into the roads budget

07:04and we don't want to see a reduction in that

07:06so that's whether or not it's the small sort of jobs

07:09in terms of potholes and things

07:10or actually infrastructure of our roads that the council is responsible for

07:14so we'll also be wanting to see a commitment on that

07:18we also know we've got pressures in terms of our high schools as well

07:21because of course Fife missed out on leap three

07:24for funding for Glenwood and Glenrothes

07:26which means there are upgrades needed at those schools

07:29and also we've got Balweary High School as well

07:31which we need a new high school for

07:33and again we've got no funding from the Scottish Government

07:37so there's going to have to be investment made in that as well

07:40so I guess those are some of the areas that we're looking to focus on

07:47going forward this year in the budget

07:50Yeah, we're obviously in a position right now

07:55because it's a minority administration

07:57Labour are needing the support of other parties

08:00so we have written to Labour

08:03to set out what our expectations would be

08:06for us to be able to vote for a budget

08:09some of this is looking at making sure

08:15that we don't have an undue impact on education

08:19we can't see cuts in education funding

08:22that is going to damage the education of our children and young people

08:29We're also really keen to make sure that

08:34roads funding is kept at a proper level

08:37that there's funding as well to deal with some of the flooding issues

08:41obviously we've seen the weather is getting worse and worse

08:46with the climate emergency

08:49and frankly we need to be as a council on the front foot there

08:54in tackling that

08:57There was also some proposals going around potentially

09:00of having really high inflation busting increases

09:03in some of the harbour fees

09:06it's a tough time for many people working in the fishing industry

09:11and we just felt that it would be unreasonable

09:15to have huge increases there

09:18so we've said to the administration that it needs to be more reasonable

09:22thought put into that

09:26On top of that as well there's a few projects

09:29in the capital budget that are important for us

09:32we need to see progress in these projects

09:36so there's the Fooquay Mill flooding scheme

09:40which the residents living in that area

09:43have been blighted by some really bad flooding in recent years

09:47so we need to see work pushed on ahead in that

09:51The Anshover Care Village as well

09:54is important there

09:57we obviously have an ageing population

10:00particularly in that area of Fife

10:03so we need to have that provision put in place

10:06and the Cooper Recycling Centre

10:09seems to have stalled on the progress there

10:14so those are three ongoing projects

10:18We just want to see some commitment from the administration

10:21and we're also keen to see work done

10:27for replacement swimming and sports provision

10:30in light of the closure of Inverkeeping High School

10:33which will be coming up

10:36so we've spoken to the administration

10:39and we've also written to the administration

10:42with what we want to see here

10:45So we're just kind of obviously waiting to see

10:48what they're going to come back with

10:51If they come back with a budget that covers this

10:54and is acceptable in other ways

10:57then hopefully we might be able to support it

11:00In an ideal world, it would be nice to have a budget

11:03that all the parties could agree on

11:06Whether that comes to pass or not, I don't know

11:09We need to see the detail ourselves

11:13of what the administration is going to come out with

11:16before we can agree to support it or not

11:19If they don't, we can always put up our own proposals

11:22at that point

11:25as could be other parties

11:28But it's maybe a case of waiting and seeing

11:31I think there is probably a general willingness

11:34to engage from all the parties in this

11:37Hopefully we can create something that will work

11:40not just for all the political parties

11:43but for all the people of faith

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