IT IS THIS time of the year again when every shop has gone early for Black Friday. You can’t go anywhere without seeing Christmas lights, markets and the hearing the usual Christmas tunes. Every retailer is urging us to spend, spend, spend but this year the John Lewis advert is urging us to spend wisely and invest in something that will stand the test of time.  

On December 4 the Scottish government will present its Budget for the forthcoming year, and 32 local authorities setting their budgets in the new year. Surely this is the time to spend wisely to invest in the future of Scotland?

The importance of getting public services properly funded is absolutely key if we are to thrive across Scotland.  

When you think of the vast range of services that touch people’s everyday lives, the importance is blindingly obvious. Get the public services right and communities have a fighting chance. Decent housing which is fit for purpose and affordable, early years and schools which provide educational opportunities to lift young people out of poverty, a healthcare system that takes care of us from cradle to the grave. 

These are the services which catch the media’s attention, but what about all the others — libraries, social work, art galleries and museums, our parks, youth services, waste collection? These are all just as important. The problem is that many of these services are, in many cases, on their knees after 14 years of austerity.  

The issue is sometimes people don’t see the full impact of the cuts, especially if it is in a service area which they are not using. It is only when they try to access a service that they come face to face with an overwhelmed service with reduced capacity.

Unison has been allocating time and resources at UK level to highlight the issue of cuts to funding and what it means for the service users in that area.  

On our website there is a dedicated page under the banner, Take Action on Council Cuts. You can then click on the map to find the funding gap in your council area and we are encouraging people to get involved by emailing their elected representative to raise concerns with them. It makes for sobering reading and it is essential that we continue to put political pressure on politicians to make the right fiscal decisions.  

By not spending to invest we are at real danger of being unable to deliver good-quality public services. Unison took the unique route to promote this area of work by getting the Financial Times to run a piece specifically around the £4.3 billion “black hole” in councils across Britain for the financial year 2025 to 2026. This is then forecast to rise to more than £8.5 billion in 2027. 

We are in no doubt that there is a serious risk of the widespread collapse of local government if action is not taken. Our argument is that central government, be it Westminster or Holyrood, needs to invest financially much more than it has been doing in the past and make those settlements longer-term. It has been widely accepted that an annual settlement is not the way forward and this is to be welcomed. 

So, what is happening in Scotland to put pressure on the Scottish government prior to the Budget on December 4? 

November 27 will see a large number of trade unionists from across Scotland under the STUC banner at a rally, along with a series of meetings arranged to lobby politicians at the Scottish Parliament to put across the concerns from Scottish workers.

The day after the Budget, December 5, is for us in Unison (who work in local government) our Local Service Champions Day — part of a campaign which celebrates the workers who deliver local services and highlights their contribution. Let’s hope that the politicians make the right choices in order to put money back into services that are crucial for the communities across Scotland.

Brenda Aitchison is a member of Unison’s local government committee.