As I've indicated before, we remain firmly of the belief that front line services should be protected as much as possible and we were simply not convinced that funding cuts were absolutely necessary in 2010/11 - the Council's revenue budget allocation from the Scottish Government for 2010/11 will be £810.885m, an increase of more than £14m (1.76%) from this current 2009/10 year.
Inevitably though, the combined vote of the SNP/Lib-Dem coalition Administration was sufficient to approve their budget and it will now be implemented.
As a result, a quick analysis of the main education-proposals show that:
- £2.440million will be cut from devolved school budgets across the city meaning an average reduction of approximately £10K in each Primary School and approximately £40K from an average sized High School.
- £655K will be cut from Community High Schools across the city.
- £260K will be cut from Community, Learning and Development services.
- A further £1.355million will be cut through "various" and "additional" savings from services to children and young people and school and community services. These have not been itemised.
A whole range of reductions to block grants were also approved, but the detail of their implications won't be fully known until the next Council Meeting on Thursday 11th March, when individual grants are allocated.
There was also a huge range of very significant increases to service charges and I'll try and blog about them over the coming days.
All-in-all though, a bad day for front line services - and a particularly bad day for Edinburgh's schools :-((
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