Never mind the roadworks, stick your pin in Bute House - Susan Dalgety

Bored with Homes Under the Hammer? Fancy a change from Pointless? Fed up playing solitaire on your smartphone? Edinburgh City Council has just the thing for you.

First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf at Bute House in Edinburgh – but not for long if Susan Dalgety has her way. (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

Its 2024-25 budget consultation, which went live last week, is no ordinary online survey.

Using the latest geo-tag technology (no, I had never heard of it before either), the council invites you to stick a pin on the location in the city that you consider to be a priority for improvement. According to the website, you can tag the location of a problem in your neighbourhood or an issue anywhere across the city. Trouble is there aren’t enough pins to cover the city’s traffic hot spots that turn 10-minute bus journeys into a 20-minute crawl through grid-locked traffic. But you get the picture.

The council is employing very basic gaming techniques to encourage people to take part in their consultation. Once you have pin-pointed your area, you are invited to tell the council why you want change and what effect the current situation has on you.

I started to tell them about how I was very nearly late for a rare face-to-face GP appointment last week because my taxi got stuck in backed-up traffic from the roadworks at Cameron Toll, but I changed my mind. Everyone knows Edinburgh roads are a nightmare, including every one of the 63 councillors.

I was then invited to tell the council about something it had done well this year, again by dropping a pin. This was easy. I think the men and women of Edinburgh’s refuse collection service do a wonderful job. Once a week, come rain or shine, our tenement’s green and grey bins full of recycling and general rubbish – most of it generated by our flat, it has to be said – are emptied without fuss. It is a service we largely take for granted.

I have spent time in countries where there is no public refuse collection and believe me, you wouldn’t want to know how people get rid of household waste when there isn’t a fleet of council bin lorries to pick up rotting garbage from the kerbside.

The really tough question comes towards the end of the survey. The council has to save £143 million over the next few years, so asks "what service should the council stop providing?”

None, is my answer. In fact, I want the city council to spend more on social care, schools and housing. I want all the potholes filled in and pavements kept pristine. But I am realistic. Edinburgh is the lowest-funded local authority in Scotland per head of population. Councillors have already had to make £400 million in cuts in recent years just to balance the books.

The council’s annual budget survey is a great idea in principle. After all, this is our city, and we should have a say in what services get priority. But we should all be making our views known to the paymaster – the Scottish Government. It is the government’s funding decisions, including the recent council tax freeze, that decide the level of local services, whether we live in Edinburgh, East Lothian or the Borders. I think I will stick a pin in Bute House, and suggest a new occupant.