RUBBISH bins will only be collected once every three weeks if new budget cuts are approved.

Council chiefs are desperate to slash millions off West Dunbartonshire Council’s spending and are launching the second year of public consultations to get resident approval for their options.

But the 29 savings options, totalling £1.717million in cuts, include making more than 30 workers redundant. It would also see the scrapping the care of gardens scheme and reducing or scrapping altogether the public events hosted by the council – including the Scottish Pipe Band Championships, held every year in Levengrove Park in Dumbarton, and the firework displays in both Dumbarton and Clydebank.

Gritting of footpaths would be reduced, festive lighting ended, Dalmuir Golf Club would close and school funding cut back.

Other proposals include reducing the frequency of street cleaning from fortnightly to monthly, with resources concentrated on high-use pedestrian areas.

And they would increase the number of biodiversity areas across West Dunbartonshire – also known as a reduction in the number of grassed areas which would be looked after by the council’s greenspace team.

Charities would also be hit with a cut or end to the 20 per cent rates relief for shops.

Millions in cuts were put out to public consultation in December 2017, most of them backed by the public and cited by the SNP when they made their final budget decisions in March 2018.

The SNP administration then U-turned on ones such as cuts to union conveners for staff after protests and softened the blow on reducing public greenspace care.

Labour focused their attacks this year on the reduction of the care of garden scheme, which would now be axed entirely.

The cuts were prepared as the draft Scottish Government budget was presented last week. The final payout to West Dunbartonshire Council is still unknown.

Council tax, in all calculations, is expected to rise by 3 per cent next year.

When they meet in Dumbarton on Wednesday, councillors will be asked to approve a public consultation exercise on all the above savings options, and more – including withdrawing 12 school crossing patrols from locations where there are already controlled crossings in place, and introducing major cuts to the “facilities assistant” cover are the area’s primary schools.

The latter move would see a “mobile” team of 12 staff visiting schools approximately one day each week – significantly less than the current staffing level, which sees all the area’s 32 primary schools staffed by a full-time “facilities assistant”.

Dunbartonshire Chamber of Commerce said they would have to scale back their work if the cuts went ahead.

Chief executive Damon Scott said: "This is a real blow to our plans for the continued development of the chamber in the area unless we can find alternative sources of funding. Whilst we plan to increase our support to all of our members in 2019 this reduction will unfortunately mean that our work in West Dunbartonshire with a significant number of non-member businesses will need to be pulled back at a crucial time for business and the economy.

“As a chamber we would urge West Dunbartonshire Council to reconsider this proposal and to look at alternative arrangements so we can continue to provide our valuable business support and contribution to the local economy. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss continuing our partnership further with council representatives.”

Councillors were warned last month the budget gap could be as high as £13.5m by 2021-22.

Labour slammed the SNP administration over the savings proposals.

Councillor David McBride, Labour’s finance spokesman, told the Reporter: “This year so far the SNP have agreed to cut 45 jobs already in further reorganisations before these additional budget savings were published.

“To now see this incompetent SNP council are once again considering slashing street cleaning, bin collections and gritting our pavements is a disgrace.

“These continuous year on year cuts have to stop.

“There comes a time when there are no further cuts that can be made that will not have a detrimental impact on our residents, services and staff.

“We should not sit back and meekly accept these cuts.

“It’s time that West Dunbartonshire received fair funding from the SNP government and the years of austerity must end.”

SNP council leader Jonathan McColl said: “The total funding provided to us through the draft settlement offer from Scottish Government is a real-terms increase and we welcome the enhanced budgets targeting new work to reduce child poverty, close the attainment gap and improved wellbeing.

“However, the expansion of ring-fencing and new service provision means that the effect of this draft settlement offer is to reduce the core budget the council has available to provide our day to day services.

“Between now and the spring, I and my fellow council leaders will be making it absolutely clear to the Scottish Government that our core services still need to be funded. or the potential benefits of the new service provision will not be realised.

“We want to ensure that we don’t exacerbate the very problems in our communities that the Scottish Government and the council are trying to resolve.”