Council freezes schools spending to save £3m

Posted: Thursday January 15, 2009, 08:32

Schools run by Scotland's largest local authority have been issued with an unprecedented freeze on budgets for essential materials, staff training and supply teachers as part of moves aimed at clawing back a £3m budget deficit.

Glasgow City Council has this week written to all its headteachers calling on them to "stop or delay" all non-essential spending.

The move - which applies until the end of the current financial year in March - is a response to the growing financial crisis and the council tax freeze, which has left the council facing a £15m overspend.

Read the full story here.

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Bill

The SNP and their supporters will respond by insisting that it is all the fault of that big, bad Westminster or that the money has already been provided.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

spagan

Good morning Wullie
Not at all.
Its probably down to New Labour's mismanagement of Glasgow City for the past century. Does it really need to pay its senior staff as much as a UK Prime Minister?
The article says unprecedented - although this kind of "end of year" panic by Council Directors has been pretty common across the last couple of decades. It may be a wee bit Stalinist by Mragaret Doran, but Headteachers - like most managers tend to spend for the sake of spending during February and March - just to make sure that they spend their full allocation.
Maybe you think it is all the fault of big bad John Swinney for having a concordat with all Scotland's Councils?
Slainte Mhor

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

slyspeed

Perhaps this might restrain the usual end of year spending frenzy by all council depts who have to spend their entire budget to ensure it isn't cut for next year. This long standing policy is one reason for the vast wastes of money in local authorities as it penalises the efficient and rewards the profligate.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Flying Scot replied to slyspeed's comment

actually that 'nonsense' is 'at last' over in this Concordat between the Scottish Government and the Councils they can now keep any money saved from the budgets and use it for next year

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Niall Barker

How is cutting back "on equipment such as pens, pencils, paint, ink, paper and notebooks" - basically the art department - going to 'claw back' a £3m budget deficit on a £15 overspend? The main costs are building, heating and staff.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

sid the sceptic replied to Niall Barker's comment

sorry Niall, you are very wrong.
the main costs are all the council directors , chief executive's and managers who award each other massive wage increases and for many years have had a must spend every penny mentality whether it is value for money or not.
also now that ring fencing has been dropped, our so called councillors , managers & chief executives of councils all over the land have been found wanting in fact they could not run a bath unaided

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Stewart replied to sid the sceptic's comment

I'm afraid that the main expenditure is not on 'managers' it is the £30k to £40k paid to thousands of teachers across Scotland for working a 39 week year.

Reply | Posted: 19 days ago

subrosa replied to Niall Barker's comment

I can well remember when all school pupils had to buy their own pens, pencils, notebooks, ink etc. Also we had to buy our own textbooks and every town/city had at least one secondhand book shop which 'traded' these. Of course books were well looked after and wrapped in brown paper to preserve them. You soon were on the receiving end of your parents' wrath if any book was, even accidently, damaged.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Flying Scot

Well i am sure the money has already been provided and the Councils were left to manage their own affairs so you cant have a go at the SNP Government for sure you can say that Westmonster REDUCED the 'grant' to run Scotland whereas the SNP Goverment gave MORE to the Councils - So this being the case if 'anyone' is to blame it is the councils AND Westmonster........Crash Gordon and his Gang - but holdonamo They Broon and his darling say it was the AMERICANS that caused the UK to be bankrupt so it was George Bush that did this - could not be Prudence Brown and his borrow more borrow more borrow more borrow more EVERYONE borrow more and sell our gold financial acumen OR Tony Bliar spending billions of pounds and costing thousands of lives on an illegal war or building more newer WMD's for the UK and sitting them in Faslane and Coulport and dumping his education education education pledge no never !!!! after all that was not a pledge only a soundbite.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Elhobster

So Glasgow, (the article is essentially about labour run Glasgow Council) a labour run council, have said that there will be a freeze on budgets, but other councils are not in the same position.

The head of Scotland's largest teaching union:

"We are demanding the Westminster Government gets together with the government at Holyrood and the council to inject more money to stop these panic cuts."

So, to the Labour supporter above; Can you explain the why the head of the EIS quoted above has made a comment at odds with your own and directed his solution at Westminster and encouraged that which Westminster despises, a dialogue with the Scottish Government?

Is he an SNP supporter, or just looking at the problem without partisan Labour tactics on his mind perhaps?

Merely opposing the Scottish Government for the sake of it has done absolutely nothing for Labour in Scotland, look at the way the liberals have relegated themselves steadily to the rear end of Scottish politics, and Labour are pursuing the same dire political course.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Elhobster

Unison are opposed.

I don't see how 'local' services can be delivered in this way, by creating supercouncils and even if proven to be a good idea (nowhere near it thus far) it will take years.

Wonder what the labourtorieslibdems hope to gain? ;-)

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Vronsky

At the time of the last re-organisiation of local authorities I felt that an opportunity was missed, and that there should have been a few large councils rather than many small ones. There was also an opportunity to arrange councils coterminous with health boards, and potential benefits to be drawn from that - especially now if health boards become elected.

However in the present context this idea seems to be emanating from Glasgow Council and getting punted by the Herald, so one is inclined to smell a New Labour rat. Let's have more detail - is this just a roundabout way of reversing the advances made by the introduction of STV for local council elections? Have Labour spied a way back to municipal monopoly?

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

TWC

Councils should share HR, Finance etc where possible. This is especially relevent in Ayrshire and the like.
We also need to cut the number of top execs all savings should be focused on front line services like education health and the environment
(Not Social Services for the unempoyable)

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Autism Rights replied to TWC's comment

Here, here.

There's a huge amount of wastage in local authorities, largely because of the `culture` of nepotism and cronyism. The `best person for the job` is rarely employed. If your `talents` lie in preventing those who really need a service getting it, then you can be sure to find a niche in the upper echelons of some councils!

www.autismrights.org.uk

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Buckpool Loon

Has anyone in living memory any recollection of a council actually reducing it's tax demands due its management abilities?

No! Thought not. And probably we never will while the present model of their financing continues. Which in essence is to ask for what they want and spend what they get while all the time creating a political fog round the issues of why they want and how they spend. Power base and politics take precedence; efficiency and effectiveness submerged beneath the bottom line.

Hugh businesses making ever increasing demands for shoddy services without ever being accountable for profits, or dividends to their shareholders.

£3m in savings over Glasgows schools? Remove the political hogwash from the equation and a clerk in the education or finance department could problably find savings double that in a day.

Reply | Posted: 20 days ago

Stewart

Dumfries and Galloway Council reported cuts to education spending last week - I don't remeber the Herald covering that, even in the foreign news section, but then, of course, you are not a national newspaper are you?

Reply | Posted: 19 days ago

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Council freezes schools spending to save £3m

Posted: Thursday January 15, 2009, 08:32

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