Edinburgh council budget: Calls for more spending and lower council tax rise

Labour has only 11 out of the Capital's 63 councillors and needs the support of at least two other parties to pass their 2025/26 spending plans. Realistically that means persuading Lib Dem and Tory councillors to back them.

But the Lib Dems say they will not vote for a budget which includes cuts to schools. And the Tories are demanding the council tax rise is limited to 7 per cent rather than 8 per cent.

The council's 2025/26 budget will be set at a meeting of the full council on February 20. | Getty Images/iStockphoto

The budget will be set at a meeting of the full council on February 20.

Lib Dem group leader Kevin Lang said: "We're very keen to make sure this is a budget that delvers for children and education. Last year we were successful in not only stopping cuts to school budgets but our proposal to increase the money for school budgets was accepted, so we want to build on that this year."

He said among the proposals for savings put forward by council officers, the one which had caused his group most concern was the plan to cut funding for transition teachers and pupil support assistants (PSAs) for P1 and P2. "We think these are very important posts and it has been a priority of ours to find the money to protect them."

He said the Lib Dems were proposing the £1.5m cost of retaining the posts should be met from extra cash available after the council was given funding to cover 60 per cent of the costs of National Insurance rises instead of the expected 50 per cent.

He said: "We've been very clear for a number of years that we will not stomach cuts to schools. The savings for transition teachers and PSAs, no matter which way you slice it, that is cuts to schools. So Labour knows that we will not and cannot vote for a budget that has that saving in it."

Cllr Lang also pointed to a joint letter from 53 parent councils across Edinburgh raising concerns about a lack of funding for road safety. He said in addition to the extra £1m per year proposed for road safety in the budget, the Lib Dems wanted to see a one-off investment of £1.6m to get on top of the backlog of road safety projects.

The Lib Dems are also proposing an extra £3m to refurbish and improve special schools. They would pay for it by not taking forward a planned increase in councillors' responsibility allowances paid to committee conveners and group leaders.

"By using that money - about £120,000 a year - we can unlock an extra £3m of capital money which we would put into special schools. We need to ensure these special schools are equipped to accommodate the increasing numbers of children with special needs that we have in the city."

And the Lib Dems want to put more money into a transition fund being created by the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (EIJB), which oversees health and social care, in response to the plight of voluntary groups set to lose funding with the scrapping of the board’s third sector grants programme.

Cllr Lang said: “There was a lot of concern about what felt like a cliff edge for third sector grants - there is money in the budget already for a transition fund, but we're looking to put in more, about £120,000, which we think will be needed, given the likely scale of the change required and helping these organisations transition away from direct grants or help them find alternative sources of funding.”

The Tories will press for the council tax rise to be kept down to 7 per cent, not the 8 per cent proposed in the budget.

Conservative finance spokesman Phil Doggart said they would achieve the lower figure mainly by scrapping concessionary tram fares for over-60s and under-22s, but also by funding the EIJB transition fund from reserves rather than next year's budget.

And Cllr Doggart said his group was also proposing more money for social care on top of the £13m proposed for the EIJB.

He said "We are proposing a recurring spend of £1.1m on setting up an innovation fund and if that were matched by NHS Lothian - which we would make a condition of the investment - that would mean capital funding of £40-50m.

“That is designed to transform how social care is delivered, given all the technology and new ways of working, and that will allow frontline staff to spend more time with the people they're providing care for."

The Tories are also demanding that the council drops its long-established policy of no compulsory redundancies. Cllr Doggart said: "We need to transform ourselves into a modern organisation, we need to start delivering for the people of this city in a way that reflects their expectations."