Aside from a possible increase in council tax, reduction of teaching posts and closure of libraries, there are a whole host of other early proposed cuts in the North Ayrshire Council budget.
Eight campus police officers currently serve secondary schools within the mainland.
This initiative is currently funded 50 per cent by North Ayrshire Council and 50 per cent by Police Scotland. It costs around £380,000 a year, with the council funding approximately £190,000.
The proposal is to invite schools to use alternative funding streams (Pupil Equity Funding) – money that will go to your child’s school to help them provide the best possible opportunities to match-fund the NAC contribution – if they wish to continue with this service.
NAC would then fund 25 per cent and schools would fund a further 25 per cent of the total cost and this would save £95,000 a year.
There is also a proposal to scrap the School Crossing Patrollers. The School Crossing Patrol budget of £250,699 supports 48 posts – providing a school crossing service throughout North Ayrshire..
The maximum realisable saving would be to remove this service totally and redeploy staff elsewhere within the council. A phased approach to delivering this saving would be to remove all current vacant posts, which would avoid the need to redeploy staff.
It may be possible to deliver a reduction of 10 per cent across school / early years cleaning budgets. A calculation of metres square cleaned per hour will be carried out to assess which sites have more hours per metres square than others.
This will then be benchmarked with other local authorities and an agreed metres square per hour applied (taking account of equipment used and layouts). This would save £345,000.
A redesign of the music service would see one full-time equivalent post cut to account for the reduction in school rolls.
One full-time equivalent post would be cut through a review of the Educational Psychology Service, saving £64,000.
Another proposal is to apply a 100 per cent Council Tax Premium on second homes.
Following a Scottish Government Consultation, councils now have the powers to vary the Council Tax charge for second homes from the current 100 per cent charge to include a premium of up to a further 100 per cent of the Council Tax charge. This would save £1.5m.
It could help increase the supply in the private rented sector and benefit local economies with a shift in more housing occupancy throughout the year.
The island communities of Cumbrae and Arran have a high proportion of second home ownership.
Thirty per cent of North Ayrshire’s second homes are located on Cumbrae (451), 39 per cent on Arran (580) and 31 per cent on the mainland (464). This policy would be applied across all North Ayrshire and tries to encourage more home occupancy when compared to the current threshold of a minimum of 25 days per year.
It is recognised however that the impact of such a change could be proportionately greater across the island communities due to the much higher proportion of second homes compared to primary homes for permanent island residents.
There is a proposal to charge a Tourist Visitor Levy.
The Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill was passed on May 28 by the Scottish Parliament and gives legal powers to Local Authorities to introduce a Visitor Levy. This would need a public consultation.
The levy would likely take the form of a percentage levy applied to visitor overnight accommodation stays up to a maximum number of overnight stays. The revenue generated, after deducting the cost of administration, could be used to invest in council services and infrastructure to support the visitor economy.
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