Councillors Murray and Davidson, leaders of the administration group of Dumfries and Galloway Council, have released the following statement regarding the budget they will present on Thursday.
“This year’s budget has been set in very difficult circumstances. Since austerity was introduced in 2010/11, Dumfries and Galloway Council has had to find cuts and savings in its revenue budget totalling £96 million, equating to 27% of annual spend. This year, we have had to make a further £10.2 million reduction in expenditure.
The Council’s funding gap this year totalled £16.215 million. In order to reduce the gap as much as we can, we have little choice other than to apply the maximum level of council tax increase permitted by the Scottish Government of 4.79%, and to utilise the full health and social care additional funding offset permitted of 2.2%.
We have retained the Council’s general revenue balance at 2% this year, the level considered by Audit Scotland to be prudent. Spending balances can only be done once, they have to be replaced or else there is nothing left to cope with emergencies. We recognise for example that there is great uncertainty surrounding the UK’s exit from the European Union and that, depending on the local implications of the final arrangements are agreed, we may need to draw on unallocated reserves to mitigate any adverse impacts on our region.
We continue to focus effort on tackling poverty in our region. £1.375 million is allocated in the budget for 2019/20 over a range of initiatives including £200,000 to be allocated next year for distribution by Area Committees and a further £200,000 by communities through Participatory Budgeting. This will help us tackle poverty within local communities. We will continue to support the development of credit unions with a £20,000 allocation and will devise a revised taxicard scheme focused on people on the lowest incomes.
The Year of Young People 2018 in Dumfries and Galloway was enormously successful, our youth services team and the young people they work with gained recognition with a number of national awards. Our legacy in Dumfries and Galloway includes the formation of a youth council and establishing Youth Beatz as a two-day youth information and music event, with funding to secure this of £160,000 per year.
Our budget includes two new capital allocations – additional funding of £1 million over two years to tackle carriageway defects in the region’s road network and £338,000 to bring the Gypsy/Traveller site at Glenluce up to the standards required by the Scottish Government.
Funding previously allocated but not required in the 2018/19 programme has been reallocated to provide £30,000 to the Annan Harbour Action Group to assist with the legal and administrative costs in progressing a Harbour Revision Order to set up a new Harbour Trust. A further £260,000 has been allocated as a further contribution to the development of the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal.
We recognise that, with cumulative cuts in our budgets of over £100 million and the prospect of more to come, the Council cannot provide all the services that it used to, and that we will rely on the support of communities to develop new ways of working. Community groups often lack the resource to develop such projects, and in recognition of this we are also proposing the establishment of a fund totalling £285,000 for a Community Initiatives Enabling Fund, which will be decided upon at Committee in early 2019/20. We expect to focus on projects in their early stages, which demonstrate the potential to achieve socio-economic benefits for their communities.
We will continue with our policy of no compulsory redundancies and job losses will be handled through Early Retirement and Voluntary Severance, redeployment and the non-renewal of fixed-term contracts.
Our Administration does not underestimate the scale of the challenges we face in the coming years. Our Council will not be able to provide every service it does now, and some of those which remain will need to be delivered in different ways.
When we set out our Administration’s Priorities and Commitments in 2017, we set aside our differences in order to do the best for our region. We present this budget in that spirit and commit to working constructively with all colleagues in the coming year.”
