Cuts and council tax hikes could bridge £40m North Ayrshire budget black hole

Daily Record

06-06-2025

The next three years provides a range of financial challenges for the local authority.
National financial bosses are warning of a structural funding gap of more than £40m over the next three years for North Ayrshire Council.
And the authority were warned that cuts will be needed along with workforce changes and council tax and charges in the Audit Scotland North Ayrshire Council Best Value Thematic Management Report, presented to Thursday's Audit and Scrutiny Committee.
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The report revealed that the council's latest Medium Term Financial Outlook has identified a structural funding gap of £46.7m in the three-year period to 2027-28 (including HSCP pressures).
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Projected savings from transformation fall significantly short of the savings required. Officers are clear that future recurring savings also need to be made through workforce changes, cuts in services, and council tax and fees and charges increases..
Officers have indicated that future recurring savings also need tobe made through workforce changes, cuts in services, and council tax andfees and charges increases.
However, Audit Scotland claim the transformation programme needs to be sufficiently ambitious to respond to the scale of the financial challenges.
The Accounts Commission's Local government in Scotland Financial bulletin 2023-24 noted that councils need to intensify transformation activity, progressing at scale and pace to ensure their financial sustainability.
The council's current transformation programme, known as its Sustainable Change Programme, was approved in 2023 and clearly sets out how it intends to transform its services, in line with its priorities, through five workstreams and six service reviews.
Between 2021-22 and 2024-25 the council achieved financial efficiencies from its Sustainable Change Programme of £3.136m.
They plan to make further efficiencies of £8.5m over the next three years.
There was scope for the council to consider opportunities for more radical transformational change with partners.
Mark Boyd, Head of Service (Finance), told the committee that in terms of transformation there is a lot of work going on and the solar farms would generate revenue.
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They were progressing with a number of services reviews like waste services, learning resource reviews and digital workstreams.
There was also more momentum about how the 32 councils could better work together.
In areas like blue badges, he said they could maybe have one solution across the authorities. Thirty-two councils were all doing similar tasks and they had to look to harness that activity and target efficiency from it.
Budget preparations were beginning next week with the executive leadership, the finance boss revealed.
There were also ongoing discussions with other Ayrshire councils around wider reform and opportunities to share services and that would continue although there had to be the will to progress that through three separate entities that had to be done at officer level and leadership level.