As I said in my previous Courier article, the budget realities facing councils are unprecedented.
They are not, in any way, particular to Dundee but rather, illustrative of the bigger and more deep-rooted issue with local government finance.
Despite this, my team and I have been working over a number of months to balance the increasing costs, demands and expectations with the realities of our budget settlement.
It’s an understatement to say that this has been challenging and it has genuinely resulted in much agonising, debating and soul searching.
What many don’t know is that the council’s budget helps individuals, organisations and communities in ways that are often unseen and not understood.
People won’t know for example, that:
These are, of course, just a few examples but illustrate that beyond merely protecting council services, we are very much trying to protect and support vital organisations and charities who operate and support the city more generally.
They all have incredible value and our budget decisions impact on all of them. What you see in press coverage is much like the tip of the iceberg, but there’s far more under the surface.
Every item in the budget that we protect usually results in a need to cut something from somewhere else and that is the painful reality.
With a circa £24m+ hole to fill, there were no easy choices after 13 years of austerity.
It’s against that backdrop that this year’s budget should be seen.
As recognised by the recent Audit Scotland assessment of Dundee City Council, we have always sought to strike a balance and build a sustainable budget that doesn’t store up problems for future years.
Reserves are there for a rainy day and it’s pouring down right now.
This year, the pressure, scale of savings required and demands on services have necessitated a different and bolder approach. That is why the SNP administration has used every means at our disposal to protect services and avoid the most damaging effects of austerity.
In this year’s budget proposals, there will be no immediate closure of facilities such as Mills Observatory, no reduction to school crossing patrollers, no cuts to Christmas budgets, no cuts to the school swimming service, we will not be altering the frequency of bin collections, nor will be cutting vital funding to advice services or vital support such as discretionary housing payments.
We will also freeze council tax, at a time when everyone is seeing bills outpace income.
That is not to say that the budget will be easy, without any pain or without reductions, but we firmly believe that we have struck the right balance, in the interest of all Dundonians.
Instead, amongst a series of measures, we will use reserves of £6.7m to protect your services, modest increases in some charges, modest decreases to some external funding and savings related to a review of areas of spend, such as city marketing and bringing together three employability services into one.
In equal importance to protecting the services that you all value, we will also provide vital support of £500,000 to deal with some of the impact of the cost of living crisis, including support for food larders and foodbanks across our communities, £160,000 to continue support for the economy and events, £200,000 to continue work across Dundee’s communities to reduce litter and improve the environment and £2 million to deal with anticipated increases in children’s services, such as social work residential care.
All in all, this budget avoids sweeping cuts and reductions to services that people, rightly, want us to protect whilst also investing in the areas that we know are vitally important for the city going forward, including support for the city’s most vulnerable.
No budget in these days of austerity is without pain, but I hope that people will see that our SNP administration has been laser focused on delivering the best budget in the most difficult of circumstances.
Reserves are there for a rainy day and it’s pouring down right now.
Our city has changed dramatically in the 35 years since I was born and raised in Kirkton and I would argue that in many ways, it has changed for the better. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect – far from it – but we should recognise the journey.
As Dundonians, we are allowed to be proud of how far we’ve come as a city, even if it’s not always where we ought or thought we’d be.
We’ve had our fair share of setbacks over the years, and we have and will continue to bounce back stronger.
This budget, I hope, will allow us to continue to strive for better and to take the forward city with a bold determination and ambition for the future.
John Alexander is the leader of Dundee City Council and an SNP councillor for Strathmartine.
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