A budget focused on what residents care about most - Jane Meagher

City of Edinburgh Council leader Councillor Jane Meagher

Edinburgh’s residents have been loud and clear that they want spending on schools and roads to be protected as well as sharing concerns about the local impact of the national social care crisis.

Unfortunately, this investment in our core services comes at a cost. Residents are aware of the financial challenges we face following years of underfunding and they’ve told us in their thousands that they want to see vital services enhanced, and that they’d be willing to see Council Tax raised to make this happen

Our £1.8bn spending programme includes £26 million raised from an 8 per cent increase in Council Tax – this will contribute hugely to protecting frontline services and investing for the future.

We’ve agreed record spending on over a dozen new and existing school buildings, with £296m to be invested in five new campuses and five extensions, plus a replacement building for Fox Covert and an additional £30m towards upgrading special needs schools; £6.6m will be spent on road safety, particularly around schools. There’s £0.5m to drive improvements in educational attainment and £1m for special needs holiday hubs.

We’re investing up to £66m in adult social care infrastructure and £14m extra for day-to-day spending, in light of increasing demands for services, a growing and aging population and the rising costs to delivering these services.

We’ll spend £40m on roads and transport in the year ahead and a further £6.6m in safer routes to school and travelling safely. We’ll continue the extra £12.5m investment this year and another £12.5m next improving roads, pavements and alsostreetlighting in areas identified by our women’s safety survey as feeling unsafe.

We have committed to climate remaining a key priority and an additional £2.9m will support actions with city partners to address Edinburgh’s climate and nature emergencies.

We’ll accelerate the work of the End Poverty Edinburgh Action Plan, tackle the city’s housing emergency - by investing £50m in purchasing and building suitable temporary accommodation for people experiencing homelessness – and we’ve set aside up to £3.5m for third sector interventions for poverty prevention, health and wellbeing.

We will tackle and resolve Edinburgh’s housing emergency in ways which prioritise our tenants, prospective tenants and residents. With this in mind, we have agreed a long-term investment programme of £2.104b. Unfortunately, we remain the lowest funded local authority in Scotland, therefore, to fund this investment in housing, council rents will be raised by 7 per cent.

I will continue to fight for fairer funding for Edinburgh. Huge pressures on health and social care and housing remain unaddressed nationally and while this Budget takes care of the immediate pressures on local services, we need greater action to be taken at national government level.

Jane Meagher is Edinburgh City Council leader