A THREE year plan to save nearly £12million of council money has been backed in principle by councillors.
Members of the council’s corporate policy committee were presented with a range of cuts in a bid to save £3.9million each year for the next three years.
The hardest hit area is education, where more than £1million of the savings will come from each year.
The various cuts now have to be approved by the relevant committees. If they are believed to be unacceptable, the committee will have to suggest an alternative saving totalling the same amount, if not more, which will then return to the corporate policy committee for approval.
In a report to the committee the council’s accountancy operations manager, Paul Garrett, revealed that £3.9million of savings has to be made each year for the next three years.
Just over £2.1million of that saving is set to come from corporate savings, such as reducing absence levels and travel costs - cuts that were approved by the committee.
However, the remainder will be made by cutting services.
This will see £261,000 cut from the pre-school budget, £286,000 cut from children’s services and £621,000 from restructuring staff and ending a contract with Solway Heritage.
Other cuts will be gained from changing the way leisure services are offered at the David Keswick Centre and King George V in Dumfries.
It is also hoped that £18,000 will be saved due to the new licensing legislation as a larger number of licensing activities will be self-financing.
In the report, Mr Garrett claimed the main reason for the cuts is the local government finance settlement from the Scottish Government, with £70million being paid out across Scotland to help local authorities continue the council tax freeze.
While this sees Dumfries and Galloway receive £1.866million, Mr Garrett believed this was a “disproportionately low share of the funding available” and that the council is “effectively penalised for controlling costs and limiting council tax increases in the past”.
He added: “If the funding had been allocated based on shares of estimated need to spend, Dumfries and Galloway would have received approximately £2.1million extra per annum and is therefore losing out by an accumulating £234,000 per annum.”
A number of future cuts have already been identified, including stopping direct funding to VisitScotland and ending a service that sees Christmas lighting put up and taken down.
There are also plans to close leisure facilities on Bank Holidays and between Christmas and New year, as well as halving the number of games offered in parks.
