Monday October 13th 2025
West Lothian Council headquarters
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
West Lothian Council will have to cut £23m from its budgets over the next two years.
Cuts may come across the board and could touch the lives of almost everyone, in services from transport, to rubbish collection, parks and recreation and community support projects.
Leading services such as the Advice Shops, which have helped thousands, could also face cuts as a non-statutory provision. If the council maintains a no-redundancy policy posts could go unfilled to save money.
Senior officers have identified potential savings set to go before councillors tomorrow – with a public consultation launched later this week.
The results of that month-long consultation will form the basis of proposals taken forward in the New Year.
The costs of providing statutory services such as elderly care and homeless provision are outstripping the Scottish Government annual award. The bulk of of the council’s annual budget, 80%, is ring-fenced to cover Holyrood ordered spending.
Until this year West Lothian and other local authorities had been hobbled by a decade of Council Tax freezes. At 8.5% the local Council Tax increase, agreed in February, was higher than some neighbours – South Lanarkshire’s was 6%- but well below others. Falkirk’s was 15%.
However, even with a big hike and increased income from Council Tax, the council is still facing a significant budget funding gap.
Council insiders stressed that the proposals are not an agreed list of measures but are an illustration of action that could be taken.
Councillors haven’t been involved in developing proposals but views and comments provided will help to shape the final budget proposals to be then presented to councillors in future, and will help them to make a final decision about West Lothian Council’s budget in February next year.
Chief Executive of West Lothian Council, Graham Hope said: “We want to work with our community, staff and partners to ensure that the council becomes more sustainable, addresses the funding challenges and meets the needs of our communities.
“The council has a limited number of options in terms of what choices can be made. Legally, the amount a council spends on services must be the same as the funding we receive – that is a statutory requirement and after years of insufficient levels of funding provided to councils, combined with a huge increase in demand for some services, there are no easy choices.
“It is vital that the local community, our staff and partners have the opportunity to consider the proposals set out by officers and are provided an opportunity to have their say. I would encourage residents to take the time to consider the information in the consultation and provide feedback.”
This is the third such public consultation. In papers due to go before councillors tomorrow (Tuesday) a report states: “Across the two phases 7,605 responses and over 36,000 individual comments were received. The results from both phases were reported to Council Executive and PDSPs during 2022 and 2023.”
It adds: “It should be noted that there remains a high degree of uncertainty regarding the budget gap and the income and expenditure assumptions in the financial model, in particular the local government finance settlement which will likely be in January 2026.”
Tweet Share on Facebook
