North Ayrshire Council's leader has pleaded with the area's MSPs to provide funding for the area's services.

Councillor Joe Cullinane has written to SNP constituency MSP’s Ruth Maguire and Kenneth Gibson as well as the West of Scotland list MSPs.

In his letter, Councillor Cullinane points out that due to inflation and increasing demand for services, that North Ayrshire Council would need an increase of over £14m just to stand still.

After year’s austerity the Council Leader warns MSPs that there “is no fat left. The next stage of austerity, should you vote for it, will cut straight to the bone”.

With 83 per cent of the local authority's budget being directly controlled by the SNP Government and only 17 per cent being made up of Council Tax, Councillor Cullinane has made it clear that it is our local MSP’s not North Ayrshire’s 33 democratically elected Councillors who will have the greatest say on the future of local services.

Council leader Joe Cullinane said: “The future of the local services that our citizens rely upon rests in the hands of our MSP’s.

“The draft budget that the SNP Government presents on Thursday will virtually allocate every single penny that North Ayrshire Council has to spend on local services next year.

“The only tax power available to North Ayrshire’s 33 elected Councillors is Council Tax and even then the SNP Government determine what increases are capped at and only allow Councils to set that increase across every band.

“In contrast the Scottish Parliament has full control over Income Tax bands, has borrowing powers and can create new devolved taxes. Our MSP’s therefore have the choice – they can choose to impose cuts on North Ayrshire or choose to properly fund public services.

“If they choose cuts then everything from teachers in our schools to libraries and community centres are under threat. I hope they make the right choice for the people and communities of North Ayrshire.”

Councillor Cullinane had a special message for Ruth Maguire MSP. The Council leader has reminded Ruth that she was the council’s Finance Member in the previous SNP administration and during her term cut millions of pounds out of local services with little or no opposition to them.

Councillor Cullinane added: “Ruth Maguire, as the Council’s Finance Lead, moved annual budgets on behalf of the previous SNP administration that cut millions of pounds of services. I do not recall Ruth or the SNP Group once signalling an ounce of regret that they were being forced to make the cuts. Nor did they ever call for more funding from their own SNP Government in Edinburgh.

“However, before voting to slash funding for local services, again, I do genuinely hope that Ruth recalls how vital the services that Councils provide are to people in our communities and decides to put party politics aside and instead stands up for the people she is elected to represent.”

Cunninghame South MSP Ruth Maguire said: “The fact of the matter is that the Tories at Westminster will have cut Scotland’s discretionary budget in real terms by £2.6bn, or 8.1 per cent, between 2010-11 and 2019-20. Next year alone, we are facing cuts to our revenue block grant of over £200m.

"Against that backdrop, the SNP Scottish Government has treated local government fairly, as well as channelling more money directly to schools through Pupil Equity Funding - and we will continue to protect our public services.

"Labour should join with the SNP in condemning Tory austerity and cuts to Scotland’s budget. Instead, they are more interested in attacking the SNP than the Tories.

"They also appear to have conveniently forgotten that they voted for the SNP’s council budgets without dissent. These attacks are the height of hypocrisy.

"But whilst Labour continue to mount misleading and hypocritical attacks on the SNP, we will continue to oppose and to mitigate where we can the Tory-imposed budget cuts and Tory-imposed austerity which are the real threat to Scotland’s local authorities.”

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