Council agrees budget

A BUDGET 'to kick start the region' has been agreed by councillors after almost six hours of discussions.

Money will be pumped into job creation through a new five-year modern apprenticeship scheme costing £1 million, £100,000 will go to a scheme for graduate employment and £60,000 for young entreprenuers.

Backing that up there will be a new high street face lift scheme for £400,000.

Other priorities were protecting the vulnerable and low-income families with an increase in the school clothing grant from £60 to £80, the living wage is to rise and extra allowance for welfare and benefits advice and kinship care.

In education, £100,000 will allow development of modern languages and video conferencing in schools.

A budget tabled by the Conservative/LibDem supported by the SNP won the day.

Labour councillors later slammed the SNP for ‘getting into bed’ with the administration.

Labour’s bid to extend the community warden’s scheme fell by the wayside and failed to make it into the budget for 2012/13.

Responding, group leader Ronnie Nicholson said: “Community wardens do an important job in our communities fighting antisocial behaviour.

“Local people across the region will be bitterly disappointed that the Tories and SNP rejected our calls to expand the scheme to other areas and as a result more communities will continue to be plagued by anti-social behaviour.”

Despite many adjournments to discuss the finer points of each party’s proposal and members banging on tables, most of the items were common on each budget.

A decision was finally reached at 3.54 pm following a vote which ended 30 to 15.

Also as part of the budget, council tax was frozen for the fifth consecutive year and £8.3 million of savings have already been secured for 2012/13.

Money for the Civic Pride and road repairs were continued, totalling £700k and £536 respectively, as was the community resilience scheme at £75k. Furthermore, winter routes are to receive £70,000

Last night council leader Ivor Hyslop said compromises had been made: “It’s quite clear from the final decision we were generous enough to accommodate requests from the other two groups.

“It is clear the other two groups have adopted some of our ideas and to get a budget through there was a little bit of movement from us, but we were only too happy to accommodate one or two issues.

“It was a case of it was as good as it could have been. We’ve got a balanced budget which we clearly set out to achieve and we have done that without selling the family silver.”

SNP leader councillor Rob Davidson added: “The overwhelming majority of the SNP’s published budget proposals were included in the budget proposals agreed today.

“The SNP group drew up an ambitious set of proposals, focussed on tackling youth unemployment, encouraging young people to set up their own businesses, as well as investing in early intervention measures for vulnerable children.”

To see the full budget visit www.dumgal.gov.uk <http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/>



NEWSDESK: 01461-202417

Print this article | Email this article

Return to News page