City council needs to decide on its spending priorities - Iain Whyte
"Don't make a drama out of a crisis" may have been a great advertising slogan for those of us who can remember the Commercial Union adverts of the 1980s but it certainly isn’t a motto Edinburgh Council can live by.
On Wednesday councillors were faced with providing emergency “resilience” funding to a host of community groups and charities across the city under the threat that some would close if they didn’t.
It was groundhog day because this is exactly what happened last year.
Changes to grant funding by the joint board that deals with health and social care services in partnership with NHS Lothian and the later than usual announcement of some Scottish Government grants for next year forced the issue.
The bottom line is that taxpayer funding from the council is now used as the insurance when other parts of the state make choices based on priorities.
The funding comes from council reserves. That’s the council’s rainy-day pot that doesn’t get replenished without finding a saving elsewhere.
I am frustrated about this because the “resilience fund” was promoted to us as covering a very short period while a wider “Third Sector” review took place.
Last December we were told this would be done in six to 12 months and would ensure we were spending scarce funds on the right things, getting the biggest impact possible. We were meant to have a fully worked out plan for the 2026/27 budget due to be set in February.
An August update told us that over 200 Third Sector groups had been consulted and that work was on track for the budget process.
Now we find the work hasn’t been done so it’s all delayed a further year.
The real problem is that the council finds it almost impossible to decide what it wants to commission. That means the default is always what was funded before. Innovative and impactful new groups can’t be funded and there is no prioritisation of the limited funds on what works best.
The Third Sector won’t be shy of telling us what they want. It’s time our officers did the same and defined what’s needed.
Council reserves are finite and the taxpayer deserves to know that their money is being used well when there are always more worthy causes than funding.
The council wants to end poverty by 2030 so the right choices must be made. Meanwhile the drama continues.