Edinburgh City Council faces stark choices with fears of £100m cuts – Robert Aldridge

On February 6, ­Edinburgh Council will find out the level of cuts imposed on it by the SNP Government. We all expect them to force Edinburgh to find around £100 million of cuts over the next three years.

Of course, the council can offset some of the cuts by increasing council tax, but that makes only a small contribution. The bulk of our cash (and the cuts) comes from the SNP Government.

Usually the council has a consultation on its budget to let people have a say, at the very least on the most outrageous cuts. This year the ­Scottish Government budget has been delayed, partly because the Westminster budget has been delayed, and so we don’t have the usual time for consultation.

I’m very sorry we don’t have that chance, since there have been some really lively campaigns in recent years. Some, like music tuition were ­successful. Others, like opposition to the brown bin ‘garden tax’ were ignored by the SNP and Labour administration, though Lib Dems and other opposition parties did pay ­attention to it.

Bold decisions

The council faces some stark choices. At its most basic, we can either continue to try to do everything with fewer resources (ie less well and at a slower pace), or start to take the bold decisions to stop doing some things so that we do the remaining things better. In other words do we try (and fail) to do more with less, or do we do less, but do it better or differently? We need to have an open and adult conversation about what is important. That is the kind of open consultation we need.

We need to get the balance right between getting our fundamental services running well and grand plans for the future. We also need to join up our thinking.

There is little point in working hard to keep people living in their homes longer if at the same time we reduce the services at community centres which keep them fit, alert and healthy.

It is illogical to promote prevention of crime if at the same time we reduce the number of community police ­officers, and there is little sense in reducing the opening hours of recycling centres at the same time as asking people to recycle more.

Genuine consultation with public

We can’t continue to ask more and more of voluntary groups without giving them the support and facilities they require.

So, while we don’t have a budget consultation this year there will be many others.

Some will be very local. Others will be of fundamental importance for the future of the city.

My plea to you is to look at them and make your views known.

My plea to the council is to make them genuinely open consultations. Too many recently have legitimately been criticised as seeming to push people towards a preferred answer.

I was once told authoritatively by a councillor (not from Edinburgh and not a Lib Dem I hasten to add) that, “consultation is when we tell people what we’re going to do to allay their fears”.

Edinburgh’s consultations need to be the exact opposite – real listening exercises which lead to change.

Cllr Robert Aldridge is the Lib Dem group leader at Edinburgh City Council.