It’s decision time
Budget update
Council Tax freeze
Council services are funded from three main sources.
Council Tax accounts for 24 per cent of funding and the remaining 76 per cent comes from the Scottish Government in the form of grant and income from business rates. Although business rates are collected locally, they are pooled centrally and redistributed along with grant. Edinburgh contributes more to the pool than it gets back in the grant distribution.
On top of this, the Scottish Government provides additional funding to local authorities that freeze the level of Council Tax. The Council is committed to freezing Council Tax until at least 2010/11 providing we get enough funding from the Scottish Government to allow us to do this.
Free personal and nursing care
From 2009/10, we expect to receive additional annual funding from the Scottish Government towards the cost of free nursing care to those over 65 who need it. This will help older people living at home, or in a care home, live more independently.
Council spending
While the Council is reliant on funding, it also has a duty to be as efficient as it can and make savings where possible. Efficiency savings of £9m have been identified for 2009/10 and a further £9m for 2010/11. The Council seeks to maximise efficiency in the following key areas:
- savings in procurement of goods and services through competitive tendering and increasing buying power by collaborating with other buying organisations
- reducing our use of energy and fuel to offset significant price increases and contribute to our goal of reducing carbon emissions
- modernising home care services for the elderly
- making use of technology to improve our processes
- rationalising our school estate in line with changing demographics
- rationalising our office estate to make better use of space
- exploring alternative ways to deliver services including outsourcing, joint ventures, and arms length partnerships.
We also intend to use our own data to identify high-cost services which could have the potential to make greater savings.
Your views
As part of the consultation process, we asked for your views about which services require to be developed further and where you felt savings could be made.
We used several questionnaires and a series of public question and answer sessions to gather the data. The consultation involved residents, the business community, voluntary sector and neighbourhood partnerships.
We will be using the data we have collected during the consultation along with our own research to better plan for our future and set an effective budget for 2009/10. We will be able to give you a further update on the budget situation in the next issue of Outlook.
Budget update
The Council is now completing public consultation to prepare for next year’s budget. The decisions made will affect the services you receive and may affect the amount of annual Council Tax you pay.
The Council has been successful in facing up to the many financial obstacles it has met this year but many immediate and future challenges remain.
These challenges include:
- rising inflation and economic downturn
- growth in demand forcare services
- providing affordable housing
- costs of implementing a new wage deal for employees
- aiming to meet climate change targets.
To continue to be successful,the Council needs to establish more financial stability and balance the needs of its citizens with maintaining efficient and effective local services.