Fife Council’s opposition leader has been accused of being “hysterical”, after he claimed the budget consultation had descended into farce.
SNP leader Peter Grant said the fact a “secret” list of possible cuts had been leaked before the consultation website was launched on Monday was proof the public is being kept in the dark.
However, council leader David Ross branded Mr Grant’s claims laughable and called on him to “get real” and engage in a constructive exchange of views.
The local authority has to make a massive £77 million of savings over the next three years and officers have come up with a variety of suggestions as to how that could be achieved.
Members of the public are being asked for their views on the proposals at a series of meetings and via the council’s website.
A document leaked to The Courier last week included options such as cutting staff pay, hours and sick pay.
Mr Grant claimed it was obvious staff are not being told the truth about what some of Labour’s cuts could mean.
“They have a £2m cut that is simply referred to as ‘modernising employment practices’,” he said.
“It was only when full details of this cut were leaked to the press that anyone knew what Labour meant by ‘modernisation’.
“They’re talking about imposing a compulsory cut in everybody’s hours, cutting their rates of pay for what’s left of their hours then, to add insult to injury, they’re talking about cutting their sick pay when the stress of all this makes people ill.”
Mr Ross said: “I am disappointed that the ink is hardly dry on the pages of our draft budget and Peter Grant and the SNP are already condemning it out of hand.
“Peter needs to get real and recognise the scale of the financial challenge the council is facing. You just can’t make the £77m of savings required without it impacting on services and staff. I wish we could.”
Calling on all political groups to discuss the budget, Mr Ross added: “It seems that Peter Grant would prefer to issue hysterical and misleading press releases rather than having a constructive exchange of views on the council’s budget challenge.”
He said staff would be involved in any discussions about changing employment conditions, and stated: “The proposal in our draft budget is to find £2m of savings out of a £501m spend that’s 0.4% of our current staffing costs in 2016/17. All we’ve got is a list of potential ways to save but there’s no question of implementing all these things.”
He added: “If we do decide to include this saving in the final budget, we will follow a clearly defined, legal process of consultation on it.”
Picture by David Wardle