Three more years of major cuts lie ahead for Argyll and Bute Council, it has been revealed this week.
Earlier this year the authority announced £10m in budget cutbacks, meaning 82 jobs would be lost.
But a new report warns that the council’s ‘funding gap’ will be at least £16.9m over the period between 2017-18 and 2019-20 – and the shortfall could be twice that.
Setting out best and worst case scenarios, the report by head of strategic finance Kirsty Flanagan says that in the next financial year alone the council will have to save between £3.4m and £10.5m.
“It should be noted that the position in 2018-19 and 2019-20 is worse than originally anticipated last year as it was expected that the funding situation would improve, however, from the UK Budget 2016 it is clear that austerity is going to be with us for the next five years, with significant additional spending cuts required in later years,” says the report.
“Relatively small variations in assumptions can lead to fairly significant changes in the funding gap and therefore the budgetary outlook is presented as two scenarios – best and worst case.”
The council’s budget process was criticised by Audit Scotland earlier this year, and worryingly the only aspect seen by auditors as strategic – the creation of a charitable leisure trust to take over a raft of council facilities – is behind schedule.
The report says that ‘some preparatory work’ has been done but the trust will not be in operation until October 2017 – six months later than expected.
The report, which will considered by the council’s policy and resources committee later this week, can be seen here.
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