LISTEN: Counting the cost of council cuts

"This involves posts and hours and services that will really have a very harmful effect on women and children" - WOMEN'S AID

Highland Council's halved spending on kids' play parks, raised council tax by three-per-cent, and parking charges are coming to Alness, Dingwall, and Nairn.

The increase in council tax will mean the cost of living in a Band D property goes up by almost £36, and the parking charges will be rolled out as part of a five year plan.

Year one begins with Alness Station, Dingwall Southside, and in Nairn: the library, harbour, Cumming Street, and The Maggot. Popular tourist attraction - famous for dolphin-watching - Chanonry Point will also be on the meter.

Although the turnover forecast is £210,000, initial implementation costs will be £143,000.

Also approved today in the budget for the year ahead were plans for pay as go public toilets in Dornoch, Thurso, Golspie, and Carrbridge, and a five per cent increase added to the cost of parking permits.

And women and child domestic abuse victims face fewer refuges and waitings lists across the North, after Women's Aid had almost £80,000 slashed from its local authority funding for branches covering Inverness, Ross-shire, and Caithness and Sutherland.

"We already have services that have emptied their reserves, we already have services that have begun to reduce and shrink what they are able to offer" - WOMEN'S AID

Scottish Women's Aid chief executive Marsha Scott told MFR News: "This is not tiny salami slicing at the top, and this involves posts and hours and services that will really have a very harmful effect on women and children, whether it's some of the refuge spaces which will have to go, or whether it's the fact that children will have to go on a waiting list, and we know how difficult it is to get young people and teenagers to decide they're ready for support and services.

"We already have services that have emptied their reserves, we already have services that have begun to reduce and shrink what they are able to offer.

But Additional Support Needs and Pupil Support Assistants were protected from the £15-MILLION in cuts.

That's after a U-turn following public outcry over leaked draft budget proposals, which SNP Opposition councillor Richard Laird claims the administration mishandled. In the council chamber this morning he said: "What it should have said was, these cuts were on the table, the financial situation has changed, we're taking them off the table.

"What it actually said: they were officers' cuts. We didn't support these proposals. They came from the director of care and learning, and I think that's shameful.

"This administration owes an apology to Bill Alexander for using him as a political shield when the emails, and letters, and petitions started coming in."

This afternoon coalition administration Leader Margaret Davidson hit back: "The other thing I really did want to do today was to nail the person that did the leak, but I'm just going to say, shame on you.

"You wound up half the Highlands - many families, children, lots of communities.

"Shame on you. I am genuinely angry."

Yesterday Moray's cash-strapped council agreed a new budget, pushing green bin collections to every three weeks, and shutting town halls and community centres, unless communities take on their responsibilities.

The Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and Social, Emotional, and Behavioural Needs avoided cuts though, but three vacant posts for Home School Link Workers won't be filled.

At total of £7MILLION in cuts were pushed through, and £4MILLION of reserves are to be used to balance the budget.

This morning came a warning that Moray's most vulnerable are at "risk" of not getting the help they need, as health and social care services continue to suffer cutbacks.

Over £1MILLION was slashed from the budget which pays for social care, day services, home care, district nursing, and community hospitals.

NHS Grampian's yet to decide how much less the health board might also put into the fund.

Pam Gowans, chief officer for Moray Integration Joint Board told MFR News: "Efficiences in their self are not going to meet this challenge. We are trying to prioritise in a way that means those most vulnerable still get a service, and those that maybe can do more for themselves are enabled to take more responsibility.

"It feels like there's very little slack in the system. We're reaching a threshold where it becomes quite difficult to see where you can make an efficiency without having any material impact on people, and I think that's where we feel we're at.

"There is a worry and there is a risk that if we have to pull back more on front line services we will be finding people in situations where they struggle to get the care that they need."