West Lothian Council - £45 million pound funding gap ?

[livilad]

How has the council got into this state, having just spend millions on a new council headquarters. Can't they sell the old headquarters to land securities as well as their old offices all over West Lothian. After all the council did boost to us with free news letters about getting the best council in Britain award a couple of years ago.

What's you view folks.

[chrisb]

Alot of money..but i am happy my council tax has not went up....suppose they are going to have to find the money from somewhere, so somethings going to suffer.

[fox1]

Freezing council taxes is a recipe for disaster.
Services have to be paid for and it's our taxes
that balance the books. Personally I think the council should be be cutting out the number of chiefs and sparing the Indians. Many admin
offices could be shut and the work concentrated
centrally. Can anyone tell me what the old
school building in Robertson Way is used for.?
A lot of modern cars parked there and obviously a lot well paid staff.

[myra]

it is used as a school still, one for kids with behaviour problems also as a training unit for school staff.


myra

[fox1]

Have you seen the cars there Myra? Sometimes the car park is so full they park in the street.
I have not seen any kids though.

[Livi Crazy]

Almost every Scottish Public Sector body is facing a funding gap, all Central Government bodies are beign expected to find 2% efficiency savings every year for 5 years, and its even tighter in the local government sector. The Scottish Government budget has been drastically cut by Westminster, and subsequently all funding being handed out to local councils is far far less. A £45million gap is much less than many councils in Scotland have for this coming year. This year is going to be a difficult year, and the brutally cold winter for West Lothian has not helped, with it being £1.2million over budget on its roads and maintenance budget which is having to be covered from elsewhere, expect a lot of luxuries in the area we take for granted to be reduced somewhat.

[fox1]

The Scottish Government budget has been drastically cut by Westminster
All the more reason not to freeze council taxes?
One cannot blame central government for not making up the shortfall caused by the Scottish government's bad housekeeping?
A big boy done it and ran away?

[Livi Crazy]

This is the final year of Council Tax freeze, and the council has decided to do this from a courtesy point of view, the country is at its highest unemployment rate in decades, many people are onto 2-4 day weeks, and money is scarce, they are giving people that little bit of assurance that they dont have to worry about one extra rising cost. The majority of that money will be recovered from other areas and efficiency savings.

And it has nothing to do with SGs poor bookkeeping, Westminster has cut their budget by almost 1%, which doesnt seem that big, but is a drastic amount when you consider the amount of money. This isnt to do with poor bookkeeping, this is to do with SG and Westminster starting to claw back some of the vast amounts of money used to prevent this entire country going into meltdown, if it wasnt for the two of them's spending we would be looking and many thousands more unemployed as we would have seen HBOS, RBS, Dunfermline Building Society and more disappear off the face of the earth.

Reality check is that Government money is not unlimited, we are Billions of pounds in National debt, and we have to start reducing that now, that has to be done through cuts, and certainly not lummping the charge on the already struggling punter.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Release ... 9/17111432

[fox1]

John Swinney said today.

That link was a tad biased? In the words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "He would say that wouldn't he"
No, it's the view of the man in the street that counts and according to a recent poll the current
SNP term of office will be their last. Too many right wing independents (Tories) have jumped on the SNP bandwagon and got voted in because folk
didn't know their true agenda.
Let's get back to the socialist policies that won
WLC the title of "Best" when the socialist were in power. The SNP administration has managed to turn that around to "worst" in just a few short years. IMHO

[Sean]

This country as a whole (UK) is sinking fast. HMS UK started taking on water in 1997 and is almost sunk. I know who I blame...