‘Piling on the misery’ – Edinburgh City Council accused over planned council tax rise - your views

Council tax

‘Piling on the misery’ – Edinburgh City Council accused over planned council tax rise

Paula Docherty

Get used to it – someone has to pay for all the failed projects and vanity projects. God help the taxpayers after independence, it's only going to get worse.

Atholl Cunningham

Rather than bumping up the council tax and hitting their residents, of whom a good few will be financially struggling due to Covid, get the Scottish government to use the money sitting in the Scottish bank earning next to no interest to help all councils, so the people of Scotland can try to get the economy up and running when the time is right for restrictions to ease.

Bill Whyte

Perhaps the council should look at the projects they are pushing through, the tram completion, and the "temporary " spaces for people programme, and of course their own salaries expenses and subsidised meals. I am aware that the spaces for people was funded by the Scottish government, but the funds were also to be used for dismantling them post pandemic. But with its usual forethought and planning CEC have used it all and have nothing left to remove these things -time to get rid of this lot.

Wes Murdiff

As part of the coalition agreement between the SNP and Labour they agreed that council tax would not rise at more than a rate of 3% per year. They cannot blame the pandemic on a rise of 4.79% percent as they already increased it by that much last year and that was agreed before any bat even thought of pooing on a market in Wuhan! As for the cuts, they have been at these for years.... £5 million from the homeless budget is outrageous but not unexpected.... they’ve cut about £20 million from it in the last 10 years! It’s an easy target!

Bob Leponge

Always plenty cash to spaff away on pointless vanity projects. This council make me sick.

Tommy Wilson

Yeah, let’s extend the trams nobody wants or needs and increase the council tax to pay for it.

James Craig

When local authorities are deprived of funding from businesses and commerce, they need to collect the revenue from somewhere in order to provide the same level of public services we currently take for granted. This is what happens when turkeys vote for Christmas.

Mark English

Yet we still pay London-based Underbelly millions of pounds every year and prior to Covid sent councillors on all expenses paid trips around the world for ‘business meetings’. They will cut from the bottom not the top.

Peter Keenan

Brutal cuts to budgets and services, but they will happily splash about £1bn on a tram system we don’t need!

Roy McMillan

They cannot empty the bins, weed the streets and pavements, clean verges, fix streetlights or remove graffiti as they say the budget is too tight, but still expect you to pay £1000+ a year for services we do not receive. With anything else we could refuse to pay for a service that was not satisfactory supplied. Yet they can still blow money on useless crap like drone shows, left, right and centre.

Lucien Romano

The “brutal cuts” need to be extended to councillors’ salaries, expenses and pensions.

Building woes

Stonemasons vidoes in the Capital show loose stone features wobbling on rooftops, revealing the risks to some of the city’s picturesque buildings.

Andy Steele

I'm a scaffolder and can 100 per cent agree that Edinburgh's skyline is a death trap and urgently needs care. But from experience, when notifying clients the answer is always the same. Sadly it comes down to money.

Mark Dolan

I’ve been warning the council for 25 years! As a stonemason I’ve worked all over Edinburgh on new and old buildings. After the death at Ryan’s bar I was instructed to survey the hotel across the road which took eight days. The hotel’s upper levels were a disgrace. The report was put forward but it still took nearly three years to fix the problems. I must have taken off around 40 pieces of loose masonry. The quicker people repair their buildings, they’d save a fortune down the line, not to mention the depreciation on the value of their properties!

Roy McMillan

Half the problem is in Scotland you need to do an apprenticeship to qualify as a stonemason. It’s near impossible to get one unless you are a 16-year-old willing to work for £3.25 an hour. Anywhere else in the UK you can gain the qualification at college.If it was easier to qualify, there would be more stonemasons and in turn more competitive rates.