BUDGET PLANS WILL “CHANGE DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY FOR THE BETTER” SAYS LEADER

The budget plans agreed by Dumfries and Galloway Council will “change Dumfries and Galloway for the better” according to Council Leader Ronnie Nicholson.
The proposals agreed at Full Council today (5 February) include a commitment to deliver Dumfries and Galloway’s first ever anti-poverty strategy – backed up by a £1m per year anti- poverty fund and proposals to work with the Council’s contractors to roll out the Living Wage across the region.
Since the draft budget plans were published in December, additional proposals have been included in the final budget including a new Taxicard scheme, the introduction of Family Centres and School based Social workers, a School Transport Contingency fund and extra help for dementia sufferers. Full details of all Policy Development proposals are included in the attached document ‘Changing our Council, Changing Dumfries and Galloway’.
In addition the budget set aside a £500,000 contingency fund to support the implementation of the Supporting Learners Service Review outcomes agreed in November. The fund will be used to address any unexpected shortfalls in provision which may arise.
Over and above this a recurring budget of £500,000 in 2016/17 increasing to £1m from 2017/18 was agreed to reduce savings both within the Supporting Learners review and the Primary and Secondary School delivery review. The application of this provision will be subject to consideration by the Education Committee.
The Council Administration has also pledged to find additional savings across the Council over the next two years to re-direct into supporting the best outcomes for young people particularly the most vulnerable.
The agreed budget included commitment’s set out in the draft budget published in December including a ‘A Youth Guarantee for DG’ that every young person in Dumfries and Galloway will be guaranteed a place in education, or training or a job. The guarantee will see £3.5m a year invested in opportunities for young people to drive down youth unemployment in the region.
The Leader of the Dumfries and Galloway Council Ronnie Nicholson said, “When I became Council Leader I said building the local economy will be our number one priority not just for the sake of it, but to ensure we provide the best possible opportunities for our young people. I am therefore delighted that our plans for the single biggest ever investment to end youth unemployment in Dumfries and Galloway have been agreed. Our ambitious jobs plan will ensure investment of £3.5m a year to deliver ‘A Youth Guarantee for DG’. Every young person in our region will be offered a place in education or training or a job within 4 months of them leaving school- that’s a guarantee. Our budget also focused on support to protect the most vulnerable. Dumfries and Galloway is the lowest paid region in Scotland and that is a shameful record. I am proud that this council is playing its part in tackling that problem by delivering a Living Wage for our staff. But now I want to see that rolled out to as many workers across our region through our partners and contractors and this budget is a major first step along that road.”
Capital Budget
For the first time, the Council’s Capital Budget (the money spent on building new schools, constructing or improving roads etc) was agreed at the same time as the Revenue Budget (the money spent on the day to day running costs of the council such as salaries, heat and light, fuel, payments to external organisation for services). The key measures in the agreed Capital Budget include:-
Schools
In March 2014, the Council agreed a Capital Investment Strategy which contained commitments to invest in school buildings including a new Dalbeattie Learning Campus, phase one of the Dumfries Learning Town project which will see a new Maxwelltown High School, the redevelopment for St Joseph’s College and the building of a Learning Campus at King George V site in Dumfries. These commitments are reiterated in Labour’s draft budget. However, in a change to the March 2014 decision the Labour Group draft budget for the next three years proposes to increase funding for school buildings across the region from the baseline figure £4.25m per year to £5m per year by 2017/18 with further provisional increases in future years.
Roads
It was agreed to increase the previous allocation from 2015/16 onward for Infrastructure by £500,000 to be used for the Strategic Roads Programme, taken the capital budget to £9m a year for infrastructure.
Flood Protection
The March 2014 decision included a commitment to part fund the Whitesands Flood Protection scheme, with a bid being made to the Scottish Government for 80% of the cost but also to work be carried out in drawing up flood protection schemes for Langholm and Newton Stewart to allow future bids to be made to the Scottish Government.
Economic Development
In March 2014, the council agreed allocations towards Economic Development Capital projects up to and including 2016/17, with an indicative allocation of funding for 2017/18 of £1.5m.
For 2017/18 it was agreed to increases in the allocation from £1.5m to £2m. The allocation for that year will see an extra £400,000 towards the Stranraer Townscape Heritage Initiative- taking the full allocation to £1m. This will maximise the potential to draw down external funding towards the£3.2m plan to regenerate buildings within the Stranraer town centre conservation area. However, if those bids are unsuccessful the £1m will be retained to support regeneration within Stranraer.
In addition, £100,000 has been allocated to draw up plans for future regeneration projects in Stranraer, including the possible development of new employment sites/small business units in the area. Around £493,000 remains unallocated for regeneration projects in Stranraer due to savings in previous projects on the Waterfront and the allocation of this funding will be the subject of consultation with Wigtownshire Area Committee.
The budget agreed includes an allocation of £500,000 during 2017/18 towards Public Realm improvements in Dumfries town centre and £500,000 is also allocated to support the Moat Brae project.
A further £400,000 (brought forward to 2015/16) was confirmed for the planned Gretna Public Realm improvements taking the provision for the improvement projects in Gretna and Gretna Green and Springfield to £950,000. £100,000 was also agree to develop future proposals for the M74 corridor and Chapelcross.
Previous commitments made in March 2014 to key projects such as Next Generation Broadband and Kirkcudbright Charter are retained in the Labour Group draft budget plans, although the proposed allocation to the Kirkcudbright project is increased by £270,000 over and above the allocation agreed in March 2014. In addition the Labour Group plans add the development of the Regional Archive Centre to list of priority projects to receive capital funding.
Commenting on the Capital Budget, Council Leader Ronnie Nicholson said, “Our capital budget proposals will see nearly £370 million of investment over the next ten year in a range of projects from new schools to town centre regeneration- creating and maintaining hundreds of jobs and transforming communities across Dumfries and Galloway”.
Savings
Government cuts and the continued Council Tax freeze mean that Dumfries and Galloway Council will have to make savings of £32m over the next 3 years.
Proposals for savings were agreed as part of the budget. The most significant will come from a radical re-organisation of the Council which will cut the number of departments from 6 to 4, saving over £2m in management costs. A serious of additional service reviews following the re-organisation are planned over the next three years to save a further £10m.
Despite the savings target, the agreed budget proposes an increase in the Education budget of £1,644 m over the next year and a £88,000 increase in the Social Work budgets for the year ahead.
Councillor Ronnie Nicholson said, “Over the past four years our Council has saved £40m by reviewing how our Services are set up, making them more efficient and reducing waste. However, Government cuts and the Council Tax freeze has meant we have had to find a further £32m of savings in the revenue budget over the next three years. The radical re-shaping of our Council’s structures will reduce the number of departments by a third, securing significant savings with a minimum impact on frontline services. We also agreed to protect the overall Education and Social Work budgets including setting over £1.5m of extra resources to reduce planned savings within education.”