The Scottish Government has confirmed 14 people have died from coronavirus in the last 24 hours,
19.01.2022 - 18:09 / dailyrecord.co.uk
Council services in Falkirk will almost certainly face more cuts as a “disappointing and concerning” annual grant is on its way from the Scottish Government.
Councillors will meet on March 2 to set the budget for the year ahead and they had already braced themselves for difficult decisions to close a budget gap of £24 million.
But the news from Holyrood was even worse than expected.
The council’s chief finance officer, Bryan Smail, told members of the executive on Tuesday that they had assumed they would get a 1 per cent increase in grant – worth £3 million.
However, not only will they now have to do without that cash, the settlement has added another £1 million to the expected deficit.
Locally, the aggregate grant is £679 million – a cash increase of £63 million.
But this increase will be swallowed up by government priorities including the expansion of free school meals for primary pupils.
In practice, the money equates to a flat cash settlement and – crucially – the grant sum does not provide for pressures arising from pay, inflation, demographics or lost income due to the pandemic.
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The council is also bracing itself for a massive increase in energy costs, which are expected to hit everyone.
Council leaders from every local authority in Scotland – including Falkirk’s Cecil Meiklejohn – were so dismayed at the settlement that they wrote to the finance minister Kate Forbes in December, pleading for more help.
They told her that after years of reducing budgets there is “now
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