Councils pay price for underinvestment - Jane Meagher
With an election looming in May, I think we could all be excused for expecting more from the Finance Secretary when she delivered her budget statement earlier this month.
Like many across the country, including COSLA who have expressed ‘urgent concerns’, I was amazed by how little the Scottish Government did to address our nation’s biggest challenges, not least tackling the acute shortage of housing, together with the unacceptable levels of homelessness it brings with it.
Meanwhile, it seems inevitable that councils will once again be left to pick up the tab for social care following years of chronic underinvestment.
We have also heard that the First Minister intends to create yet another quango, this time in housing. If this body has money and powers to help councils and our partners build homes, then all well and good.
If, however, it’s just more centralisation and extra layers, then a huge opportunity to reform our broken system will have been wasted.
As Scotland’s lowest funded council, it’s increasingly clear that if we’re truly going to overcome these challenges, we’re going to have to do it alone. We were the first city to declare a housing emergency and now we will be the first to do something meaningful about it.
The budget strategy we published on Friday puts housing at the very heart of our plans, with a £1.6 billion investment in affordable homes over the next five years – one of the largest housing interventions by a local authority in modern times and all deliverable before the Scottish Government’s new quango puts a spade in the ground.
If agreed next month, our spending plans would prioritise prevention and early intervention, putting poverty reduction at the heart of our decision-making. Alongside housing, significant investment would go into homelessness prevention, support for vulnerable children and families and sustaining Edinburgh’s third sector partnerships – while also doing what the Scottish Government didn’t do, investing in our health and social care services, where we will still have some very tough decisions to make.
We need to make sure we protect our frontline services, but we also need to protect our residents and businesses from bearing too much of the financial burden that goes with it.
That’s why we’re proposing one of the lowest, if not the lowest, council tax rises in Scotland and why we’re proposing to freeze most fees and charges for the next 12 months.
Alongside our incoming visitor levy scheme, and the tens of millions of pounds it will generate for the city, we’re making transformational changes to how we raise and spend money – focusing on delivering the best services we can for the people of Edinburgh.
Budget, Finance and Resources Committee will meet on Tuesday 3 February at 10am.