Glasgow to receive extra £7.4 million funding from Scottish Government which could help ease education cuts

Finance secretary Shona Robison announced an extra £62.7m for councils who agreed to freeze the tax in February, after talks with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).

Glasgow City Council’s share of the funding has now been confirmed, with city treasurer Cllr Ricky Bell, SNP, working with senior officials on plans to spend the money.

It could help ease cuts in education — where 450 teacher positions are at risk over three years — or social work.

The council, which is facing a £108m funding shortfall over the next three years, set a budget in February before the extra money had been announced.

At a city administration committee meeting last week, Glasgow Greens co-leader Cllr Jon Molyneux asked for an update on the cash.

He said: “There was £45m health and social care consequentials and there was £17.7m for an additional incentive for the council tax freeze, to get those councils over the line who were swithering on it.

“My understanding is Glasgow’s share should be around £6m or £7m, which could potentially ameliorate the need for teacher savings or some of the pressures in social work, which are quite stark as well.”

Cllr Bell said the funding had now been delivered and he would be meeting with the council’s finance director, Martin Booth, to “look at where the real pressures across budgets and services are before we bring recommendations about how to distribute this money”.

He said he had received a letter from the chairperson of Glasgow’s Integration Joint Board, which directs health and social care services, highlighting “some of their pressures” and he is also “very conscious of the pressure in education and other services”.

“In the big scheme of things it is not a huge amount of money,” Cllr Bell added. “So we have to be careful about how we allocate that to the best advantage of our citizens.”

So-called “education reform”, which was included in the council’s budget, could see 172 teaching posts cut in 2024/25, with 450 across the three years.

In March, the city’s Integration Joint Board agreed plans to plug a £36m funding gap, which put over 100 jobs at risk.