A LITTLE over a week ago the budget for the coming year was set at West Dunbartonshire Council.

As usual, the Tories didn’t bother to offer up any proposals, or to even cast a vote on the budgets that the SNP and Labour developed. Given Tory love for austerity this can only be a good thing.

The SNP budget, for an unrivalled fourth year in a row, has no service cuts in it. While protecting services it also manages to invest in recovery and helps with the cost of living crisis.

Some of the headline figures in the SNP budget include a £400,000 grant fund to help those hit hard by the cost of living crisis, £250,000 a year to fund council apprenticeships, additional funds available to foodbanks if needed in the coming year, increased funding to the HSCP to allow them to freeze charges, a new space for social work’s children and families services, and doubling the school clothing grant.

Some of the opposition budget’s headline figures were more unpleasant than aspirational with many utterly unnecessary cuts. Health and social care was hit hardest, with £1.5million being cut at a stroke on one line, and another £404,000 cut from children and families. Quite the contrast compared to our SNP budget that increases investment in children and families.

A further £30,000 was being cut from community empowerment, and a £350,000 of unspecified cuts was to be delegated to council officers to cut from services in the coming months, rather than being agreed democratically.

Labour also sought to hike the fees for electric vehicle charging at a time when we are still trying to encourage people to switch to these cleaner vehicles.

The winning SNP budget is helping to clean up our towns with 50 new supersize bins, new collection routes and times. Labour’s choice was to risk increasing fly-tipping by upping the cost of bulky waste uplifts by 50 per cent and their attempt to fix potholed roads amounted to a mere £5,000.

By comparison the SNP will invest in new machinery such as the JCB Pothole Pro, as well as two additional roads repair workers, to rapidly get on top of the pothole backlog. This represents an investment worth millions instead of Labour’s measly five grand.

The Labour leader, Councillor Martin Rooney, quoted US President Joe Biden, saying: “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.” It is clear that Labour don’t value health and social care or children and families, and lack any real ambition to fix the roads. I’m relieved that the ambitious SNP budget, with significant community input, won the vote that day.