South Lanarkshire Council in turmoil over budget blunder

Oct 7 2010 Hamilton Advertiser

AN “ARITHMETICAL error” in a budget cuts paper has caused a serious rift between South Lanarkshire’s Labour Group and two of the authority’s senior officials.

Furious Labour councillors want to know how finance department officials miscalculated – by £38 MILLION – the amount of efficiency saving required by the council over the next three years.

Council Leader Eddie McAvoy said the blunder had damaged the reputation of the council and “dented his confidence” in chief executive Archie Strang and finance director Linda Hardie.

It emerged less than a fortnight after the Advertiser revealed how the finance department lost £102,000 to African conmen in a bank details scam.

The Labour Group have now demanded that the council’s external auditors PriceWaterhouseCopper be drafted in to discover how the mistake was made.

On Monday, the Group boycotted a councillors’ seminar at which Mr Strang outlined their financial options for the next three years.

He tabled 290 proposed cuts and income-generating initiatives capable of generating savings of £118.1m.

Among the proposals were closure of museums, scrapping of the care of garden scheme, revision of the primary schools’ building programme and up to 1800 job losses.

However, the Labour Group say there is no requirement to consider a £118m cuts package when it is likely that efficiencies of only around £80m will be required.

They have called on the chief executive to scrap the proposals and come back with a revised package “based on more realistic figures”.

Labour Group Leader Eddie McAvoy said the £118m package had created unnecessary uncertainty among the council’s staff and South Lanarkshire residents.

Last month, as a result of the bleak financial picture outlined by officials, the council announced plans to trim £3.91m from the council’s primary schools’ modernisation programme.

Consultations on the change – which would have resulted in the closure or merger of 27 schools across South Lanarkshire – has already started.

Angry parents – many in rural Clydesdale – had slammed the proposals.

Councillor McAvoy said: “In light of the revised figures, I don’t see any reason why we should not reinstate the full programme.”

The Labour Group have demanded that the decision to alter the schools’ scheme be brought back to the executive committee to be reconsidered.

Hamilton South MSP Tom McCabe, a former South Lanarkshire Council Leader was also angered by budget blunder.

“I am appalled that, after allowing politicians to consult on the contraction of the primary schools’ modernisation programme, officials could all of a sudden find almost £40m.

“Almost everyone of the senior officials earns more than £100,000 and almost all of them enjoy anonymity.

“Forty million pounds is an enormous amount of money and people should be called to account. If necessary, heads should roll.”