Budget setting in Scotland’s Councils is challenging to say the least at the moment. The cumulative effect of a decade and a half of SNP Government underfunding makes for some very tough decision making.
There was unexpected drama in Edinburgh’s historic City Chambers this afternoon as the Labour administration’s Council budget was defeated and that of the Lib Dem group passed instead.
Labour’s budget was defeated due to tactical voting by the 10 Green Councillors, who split their votes amongst the opposition parties. In addition, a suspended Labour Councillor resigned from the group during the meeting, bringing their number of Councillors down to 12.
From the Evening News:
The successful Lib Dem proposals also include a council tax rise of five per cent, less than the 5.75 per cent proposed by Labour; rejecting £5m of education cuts proposed by council officials; an extra £11m for road and pavement maintenance; £3m for improvements to parks and greenspaces; an extra £2m for flood prevention; and £3m towards the refurbishment of the King’s Theatre. But there is no money to fund the continuation of free tram fares for under-22s or bring back a cycle hire scheme.
One element that meant a lot to one particular councillor was the saving of speech and language therapies, although his very personal speech was interrupted by a former Council leader.
https://twitter.com/Lewis_Younie/status/1628734635730472961?s=20
Group Leader Kevin Lang said:
Thanks to the Lib Dems, over £5 million of school cuts have now been stopped. We promised to stop this assault on education and we delivered.
Our budget will also see a huge investment of extra money into addressing the dreadful state of Edinburgh’s roads and pavements, with extra money too for parks and street cleaning.
Our council tax rise of 5%, lower than both Labour and SNP budgets, also means better news for residents during this cost-of-living crisis.
We have always promised that Liberal Democrat councillors would focus on what matters most. We are delighted to have got a budget through that does just that.
As things stand, Labour now has to implement our budget Kevin met Council leader Cammy Day this evening.
A by-election takes place in Alex Cole-Hamilton and Christine Jardine’s constituencies on 9th March where we are campaigning to take a seat from the SNP. If we were to win, this would give us 13 councillors to Labour’s 12.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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5 Comments
The by-election is in a lovely ward, not far from the city centre and where you’ll find Edinburgh zoo. Why not come campaign?
Edinburgh city council is an interesting example of the the Unionist Parties working together to keep the largest single party, the SNP, out of power. The by-election in two weeks should be an easy Liberal Democrat win as we achieved half the vote in the ward in 2022 with the SNP getting just under 20% of the vote to secure their one councillor.
This looks good but it would be interesting to know how the budget plugs the gap between lower Council Tax increase on the one hand, and reduced cuts/increased spend on the other.
Well done for getting our budget passed, but the “no coalitions with Party X” rules imposed by the HQs of Scottish parties do not make for good local government.
Mel,
There are no easy wins for Liberal Democrats whether in Edinburgh or elsewhere, victory requires hard work, and even in this City ward last time round our second winning canddate came third on the first ballot. Here is coming fingers crossed.