City of Edinburgh Council making ‘substantial progress’ towards reducing the funding gap, Accounts Commission finds

The City of Edinburgh Council has made considerable progress towards balancing its books, the Accounts Commission reports.

The local authority watchdog raised concerns about the council's financial position in December 2014, in particular the £67m of unidentified savings needed to match future decreased levels of funding and increased demand on services.

A progress report published by the commission today finds that while the council still faces major challenges, the City of Edinburgh Council now has a clear strategy for reducing its spending.

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The council met its target of £39m savings in 2014/15 and is on track to achieve most of its planned savings for the current financial year.

A new IT contract is expected to save £45m over the next seven years. This plus a move to more online transactions, reconfiguration of some services and a 4.6 per cent reduction in staffing by the end of next month are projected to save around £25m a year.

The council is planning to reduce its workforce by 2,000 by 2017.

These measures have reduced the funding gap from £67m in 2014 to a balanced budget for the next three years and £15.3m of savings still to be identified for 2019/20.

The commission praises councillors’ “willingness to make difficult decisions and reduce services.”

Accounts Commission chair Douglas Sinclair said: "The council is now on a far sounder financial footing than it was a year ago. It has had to make tough choices on reconfiguring services and this hasn't been an easy time, not least for its employees.

"Edinburgh is not out of the woods yet and it is still early days with many of its planned actions. But it is in a much stronger position to meet the challenges that lie ahead."

Responding to the report, Andy Wightman, communities spokesperson for the Scottish Greens and MSP candidate for Lothian, said: "The Accounts Commission may well be praising Edinburgh for balancing its books but that has come with real pain for staff and service users. 

“Among the 2,000 staff who are going are experienced and talented public officials who are hard to replace.  And there is no way that cuts of £85 million this coming year alone can be made without frontline services being hit.”