‘Where is the plan?’ – Community councillor unconvinced by SIC savings strategy
SHETLAND Islands Council (SIC) has been urged to produce a public “plan” of how it will cut costs and save money in the coming years.
Lerwick Community Council chairman Jim Anderson questioned “where is the strategy” around financial savings in the SIC at a meeting on Thursday night.
Council chief executive Maggie Sandison and finance manager Paul Fraser were invited to the Association of Shetland Community Councils (ASCC) to explain how they planned to plug gaps in the SIC’s finances, with ongoing warnings about the council’s precarious financial situation.
A medium-term financial plan approved by councillors this week has targeted savings of £11 million a year from 2027/28 onwards.
ASCC previously wrote to the SIC to raise concerns expressed by a number of members about the “continued overspending by the council”, and the “inadequacy” of plans to address it.
“While we recognise that financial management ultimately sits with the council, the ongoing use of reserves and the absence of a clear, robust strategy for reducing this overspend is causing increasing concern within the community,” ASCC said.
Fraser and Sandison attended Thursday night’s ASCC meeting in an attempt to ease those fears, and to explain how the SIC plans to tackle its ongoing financial difficulties.
The finance manager told the meeting that the SIC had to plug a gap of around £46 million for the 2026/27 financial year, with £147m of the £229 million expenditure going on staffing costs alone.
The SIC says it could have a budget deficit of around £131.3 million by 2030/31, in a central projected scenario, and it has proposed capping its use of reserves at £50 million every year.
Explaining the strain on finances, Fraser said it was estimated that a teacher had cost the SIC £15,000 a year in 1994. That had since tripled to £45,000 per annum, he said.
Tingwall, Whitedale and Whiteness Community Council chairman Andrew Archer asked if the council needed to identify where savings could be made, or whether councillors simply needed to “grasp the nettle” and make some tough decisions.
SIC chief Sandison said that larger pay awards for staff, increasing material costs and rising demand for some council services had made it difficult to find savings.
She said that a number of government schemes imposed on the SIC were also only “properly funded for year one”, before the council had to find additional money.
“We will continue to change what we can change,” she said.
“We need to look at what we charge for services, because we don’t always charge the full cost for those services.”
She cited the cost of waste uplifts for businesses, which she said was charged very differently on the mainland than here.
“We’re looking at where we can charge more, where we can reduce services, where we can stop services and where we can deliver services with less people,” Sandison added.
The term “income maximisation” was also used by finance chief Fraser in how the SIC could raise more money.
He also said the SIC would be putting more pressure on the Scottish Government to provide extra funding in years to come.
Fraser said there was a constant internal discussion at the SIC about how to raise more money.
“Do you charge the people that are using the service, who maybe cannot afford it, or is this something that is pushed in to council tax and becomes a cost for all of us?
“Where does the burden fall? That’s the tension that members continue to debate.”
Sandison also pointed to a major restructure ongoing at the SIC at present, the first since 2011, with a number of senior managers retiring or set to retire.
She said a number of posts had been “deleted” under the restructure, which she is leading on.
After a comment by former councillor Alastair Cooper about perceived council centralisation in Lerwick, Sandison argued that more council staff worked outside the town than in it.
“We have more people in the community, in care, ferries, burial grounds,” she said.
Councillor Moraig Lyall, attending the ASCC meeting, said a major issue with making savings for the SIC was challenging the “public expectation” around what was delivered close to them.
Citing the example of burial grounds, she said there were around 40 dotted around Shetland – but said people expected that if the one nearest to them became full, another would be constructed in the area.
“I think that’s the kind of expectation people need to get their head around,” she said.
Lyall also cited the “really, really sad” closure of Scalloway Pool – and said there had been an expectation that the “council will simply step in” and save it.
She said the SIC was “basically working in opposing directions” in trying to save every asset locally while also cutting costs.
After the presentation by Fraser and Sandison, Lerwick Community Council chairman Anderson was not fully convinced by what the ASCC had heard.
“Where is the vision, where is the plan, where is the strategy?” he asked.
“I want the council to come with a very clear plan and a strategy to make savings. We want to know how our council is going to get folk on board in changing behaviours.”
The ASCC agreed to write to SIC convener Bryan Peterson for further information.
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