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.