Council budget: opposition say it could be 'catastrophic'
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Opposition leaders have branded the annual Highland Council budget as “catastrophic” while suggesting it does not offer the full picture of how the region will be impacted.
Both the Liberal Democrat group leader Alasdair Christie and his Conservative group counterpart Helen Crawford believe there is a lack of detail in some areas while they say the budget papers arrived late after next to no consultation.
Councillor Christie argued that far from making just £22 million in reductions, the true figure was closer to £28 million when a further £4 million saving was made with NHS Highland.
“The budget as presented has little depth to it – the explanation for a lot of the savings is very lacking and leaves a lot open to question as to what the real impact on Highland residents will be of the projected savings,” he said.
“The savings total per the SNP administration is targeting £22 million worth of savings but you need to add on to that the savings that have been added on to that of £4.1 million made with NHS Highland.
“There’s also High Life Highland savings of £1.95 million – so that takes the savings package to £28 million, which is pretty significant.
“The budget has a myriad of cuts that are going to be catastrophic for the Highlands, for the Highland way of life and for Highland people – it is pulling millions out of the education budget as well as the community and place budget.
“There is not enough information included as to how things are going to be done to achieve these savings and indeed the impact assessments included in the budget are pretty worthless, all they say are: ‘no impact, no impact, no impact.’ Yet if you are pulling £28 million out of Highland services there has to be an impact.”
Councillor Crawford said: “As a Conservative, I sit in opposition with the Liberal Democrats and both our groups have been frozen out of any proper engagement on the budget. The first we saw of the budget was Wednesday evening, one week before the special meeting set up by Highland Council to approve the budget.
“This was always going to be a budget that reflects the chronic underfunding by Scottish Government towards all councils in Scotland.
"At the end of last year, Audit Scotland identified that Scottish Government had presided over an almost £2 billion underspend in 2021/22.
"We have an SNP-Independent-led Administration in Highland and they are having to grapple with that chronic underfunding and make pretty tough choices.”
