Work underway to determine Highland’s Budget allocation

Commenting after the news received last night of Councils’ individual allocations, from the Scottish Government’s draft Budget, Budget Leader Councillor Alister Mackinnon said:

“Having received the details of our allocation just last night, it will take some time to work through the proposed settlement and do a detailed analysis. Initial indications are that a large part of the settlement is ring-fenced for new things and the cut to our core budget to fund existing services is much greater that we had feared. We will not know an accurate position until early in the New Year, but we will certainly be facing an extremely challenging situation.”

Depute Leader Alasdair Christie called for a rethink of the proposals. He said:

“I would echo the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities' view that this is very bad news for people in our area. We all know that the Highlands is a unique area and should be treated in a different way to the central belt as we have significant challenges of scale, fragility remoteness and many rural communities and a vast and aging and decaying road and building infrastructure. The draft budget indicates a severe cut to our day to day budgets and greatly increases the risks to the delivery of essential everyday services in the future year all this will have a very negative impact on the local economy and all residents.”

“In Highland, we are ambitious for the future and we want to see investment in our communities to reach their full potential. It is frustrating and disappointing to see a draft budget which, yet again, disinvests in Highland.”