New Year warning on Highland hardship

IT’S been described as a "storm", "tsunami" and "juggernaut" of looming financial pain by Highland councillors who have warned the welfare reforms will hit the region hard.

The UK Government’s biggest shake-up of the welfare system since the 1940s will see thousands of people suffer a cut in their benefits – much to the horror of local politicians of all allegiances.

An estimated £1.5m per year will be cut from the income of benefit claimants, but the Conservative-LibDem coalition has insisted it will ensure working people will be better off than the unemployed.

Councillors claim the most vulnerable residents will be affected when a single consolidated payment replaces most existing benefits from October.

Senior Lib Dem councillor Alasdair Christie, the manager of the Highland’s biggest Citizen Advice Bureau, has savaged his own party for its role in the reform and said trying to organise a meeting with the region’s three Lib Dem MPs – Danny Alexander, John Thurso and Charles Kennedy – to discuss the issue was like "trying to stick jelly onto a wall".

Behind closed doors talks will finally take place with the national trio and senior councillors on 25th January in Inverness and the outcome is keenly awaited.

In February, the SNP-led local authority, which has to find savings of £11.9m between 2013 and 2015, will attempt to agree a budget following its major consultation last year. A suggestion to cut the school day by two-and-a-half hours per week to save £3.2m has already been ditched following public uproar, so the axe will have to fall elsewhere.

Discretionary ward budgets for local small scale projects could be in the firing line especially as the authority has recently set up a £1m Community Challenge Fund.

A move to reduce the frequency of grass cutting in towns and villages and roadside verges could also be on the cards as the authority spends almost £3m a year on ground maintenance.

Aside from the budget, the authority will be under pressure to find a solution to devastating landslides on the A890 Stromeferry by-pass, while major repairs will be needed to battered coastal defences in Ross-shire, Caithness and Sutherland after last month’s tidal storms.

In August, the newly formed area committees could be rolled out to the rest of the Highlands. A one-year pilot is currently underway in Caithness and Sutherland and Inverness. Next in line is Ross and Cromarty; Nairn and Badenoch and Lochaber and Skye.

How the administration will implement policies when the power base of the opposition group of Independents is in Ross-shire, particularly, where its rivals could enjoy a majority, remains to be seen.

Against that backdrop, the Better Together and Yes Scotland campaigns will be ramped up locally as we inch closer to the 2014 independence referendum.