JOHN Swinney, the Scottish finance secretary, yesterday made it clear there will be no extra government cash to help crisis-torn Aberdeen City Council as it battles to meet a £50 million target in budget savings.
He said the council would have to operate within the financial allocations it had already received from Holyrood and take advantage of the independent financial expertise it had already recruited to bring its spending under control.
Mr Swinney sa
id: "The city council gets its allocation through the distribution formula and it has to live within those resources. That is what the government expects the city council to do."
Speaking in Aberdeen where he was opening the new offices of a local oil service company, Mr Swinney refused to reveal whether he had been aware of the true scale of the financial problems facing the council.
It was only revealed earlier this week from a leaked confidential report that the authority must make budget cuts totalling £49.7 million this year – almost double the previous estimate of £27 million in savings.
Mr Swinney said:
"What has been clear is that Aberdeen City Council has had a very serious financial situation to wrestle with.
"The problems have been accumulating over many, many years and the situation is now such that those problems have got to be tackled.
"What I am determined to do is to make sure that what is in place is the level of expertise and the level of leadership to guarantee that Aberdeen City Council can get its finances under control and provide services to the people of Aberdeen.
"The council has got to manage its way through what is a very difficult situation."
Kate Dean, the Liberal Democrat leader of the authority,
said she had no intention of quitting and denied claims that the true extent of the city's financial plight had been covered up.
The full article contains 322 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
