Tories blame tram extension for Edinburgh's council tax increase

Tories say without the tram extension the council tax rise could be limited to 3 per cent - but the coalition insisted the project is being funded outside the council budget

THE tram extension to Newhaven was today blamed by the Tories for the 4.79 per cent rise in council tax faced by Edinburgh residents.

The Conservatives said if the council had not decided to go ahead with the £207 million project the rise could have been kept to the 3 per cent maximum set by the SNP-Labour administration in their coalition deal.

But the claim was immediately rubbished by the coalition who said the tram extension involved only a small amount of borrowing before the cost was recouped from fare income once it was opened.

A full council meeting today is due to agree the city’s budget for 2020/21 and the following two years with savings of £35m in the coming year and £88m over the three years.

Controversial proposed cuts include scrapping the council’s annual £2.1 contribution to policing, saving £9.3m from social care, cutting Edinburgh Leisure’s budget by £1.5m, slashing school budgets by £1.8m, reducing library hours, removing qualified teachers from nursery schools and saving £500,000 from music tuition.

Council house rents are set to be increased by 2 per cent, below the rate of inflation.

The opposition parties are each expected to put forward alternative budgets.

The Tories claimed the current administration had “broken” the finances of the Capital and said they would limit the council tax rise to 3 per cent.

Tory finance spokesman Graham Hutchison said it was “disingenuous” of the administration to claim the extra 1.79 per cent was needed for the next round of new high schools.

He said: “The administration has made choices over the last two years. Two years ago they rejected our plan to ring-fence a two per cent council tax increase to fund the next phase of school re-building and last year they made the straight choice to fund trams rather than schools.

“The constrained financial position the city finds itself in is purely as a result of that lack of strategic planning by the administration and the decision to proceed with the tram extension when we are struggling to deliver frontline services and more pressing capital investment needs like roads and pavements.”

And he also took a swipe at the SNP government at Holyrood, pointing out Edinburgh had the lowest block grant per head of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. He said: “The Scottish Government continues to systemically destroy and underfund local government.”

The Greens called for a “climate budget”. |They said Edinburgh has set a target of being “zero-carbon” by 2030 which now had to be backed by hard cash.

The party set out a £5m package including investment in energy efficiency, solar panels and electric vehicles; more tree-planting and a new Natural Edinburgh wildlife fund; and reducing waste and cutting plastic in school lunches.

Green finance spokesman Gavin Corbett said: “I really hope that the political agreement we saw when declaring a climate emergency also leads to agreement about the need for a climate budget.”

Dismissing the Tories’ claims on the tram extension, finance convener Alasdair Rankin said: “The extension is financed outside the council budget. There is a small amount of borrowing from involved to tide us over until it’s up and running in 2023 and we can start to recoup costs from fares, but that borrowing is funded from council reserves and has no effect on day-to-day spending.

“I am forced to the conclusion that this is simply playing to the gallery with fake news, which seems to imply a low opinion of residents’ intelligence, or arises from simple ignorance of the financing mechanism for the tram extension.”