WEST Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) has set its budget for 2024/25.
At a meeting held at the local authority’s headquarters in Dumbarton on March 6 councillors voted through a variety of savings options to further close the council’s remaining £8.3m budget gap.
Council tax levels were also frozen, meaning a 2024/25 Band D charge will remain at £1398.98.
Among the options passed was a 25 per cent reduction to Y Sort It’s funding, reducing school crossing patrollers in line with national guidance, replacing breakfast clubs with early start clubs chargeable for any pupil not entitled to a free school meal, and introducing a £60 charge for garden waste collection.
To read the full list of savings options that WERE passed visit HERE.
Meanwhile, 18 of the proposed options were rejected – which means they did not receive any funding cuts.
Which proposals were rejected and therefore will remain the same?
Citizen, culture, and facilities
- Removing staffed Citizens Services Provision at Church Street.
- Reducing or removing grant funding of Clyde Shopmobility.
- Reducing or removing grant funding of the Antonine Centre.
- Reducing West Dunbartonshire Leisure Trust (WDLT) with community centres, pitches, and pavilions transferred back to the council.
- Reducing Contact Centre establishment from nine posts to eight which would have increased call wait times.
Educational services
- Reducing the School Clothing Grant for primary school pupils to the statutory level of £120.
- Reducing the Education Maintenance Allowance to statutory level.
- Reducing secondary school management time through reduction in Depute Head Teachers.
Housing, communities, and employability
- Reducing or removing funding provided to West Dunbartonshire Citizens Advice Bureau (WDCAB).
- Reducing the funding provided to support the Modern Apprenticeship Pathway.
- Reducing the Working4U services which are paid for by the council’s general revenue grant – retaining those elements funded through external grants.
Resources
- Removing the Elderly Welfare Grant or removing half and donating the balance to elderly charities.
Roads and neighbourhoods
- Reviewing or removing the provision of footway gritting.
- Leasing or closing the two bowling clubs at Whitecrook and Goldenhill and transferring the responsibility of four veteran clubs to the club committees.
- Closing Dalmuir Municipal Golf Course or reducing it to a 12-hole course.
- Ceasing the provision of the Care of Gardens scheme.
- Reviewing levels of street cleaning in residential estates, public parks, and town centres.
- Reviewing of park maintenance.
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