The council tax freeze in Dundee will be maintained for the present financial year but the severe budgetary constraints facing the city council and the country as a whole mean it cannot be guaranteed next year, according to the leader of the administration.
Councillor Ken Guild, who heads the city’s SNP ruling group, was responding to an independent review of the Scottish Government’s future spending options which concluded that the council tax freeze is unsustainable in the long term.
The review panel, headed by former Scottish Enterprise chief executive Crawford Beveridge, said government ministers should look at whether the freeze should be discontinued.
Council tax across the country has been frozen for the past three years but in Dundee the freeze came in a year earlier.
Mr Guild gave an assurance that there is no intention to go back on the freeze in Dundee which was agreed in February for the current 2010/11 financial year.
However, he conceded it was not possible at this stage to state that there would be no increase next year.
“I don’t think any local authority in the country could give that guarantee at the moment,” he said.Multi-million pound cutsDundee City Council is facing the prospect of having to find £15 million of budget savings in 2011/12 with further multi-million pound cuts expected in the following two years.
The review panel also recommended reductions in staff across the whole of the public sector, including local authorities, of between 5.7% and 10% over the next four or five years.
Mr Guild said the council had already put in place an early retirement and voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at cutting the wage bill and contributing towards the required savings target.
But he stressed it was hoped to achieve reductions by natural wastage.
“Compulsory redundancy is something we would only look at as a last resort, and we have not reached that point yet,” he said.
“We want to minimise, so far as is possible, the effect of the financial situation on our workforce, the council tax payers and the front-line services.”