SNP Cuts Worsen Glasgow Life Cash Crisis
SNP led Glasgow City Council decided to impose cuts on vital funding to Glasgow Life, just as the pandemic was reeking havoc with its finances.
Glasgow Life is a charitable organisation responsible for the delivery of cultural, sporting and learning activities on behalf of Glasgow City Council. Glasgow Life is principally responsible for the upkeep and delivery of many services life we ordinarily judge the City Council for including swimming baths, leisure centres and local libraries. But it’s also the driving force behind large-scale investment into cultural sites such as the Burrell Collection.
Glasgow Life is therefore of major significance to the quality of life, public service provision and cultural heritage upkeep of Scotland’s largest city. It is therefore disturbing to discover the sheer scale of SNP cuts to Glasgow Life’s budget
The SNP-run Glasgow City Council announced an emergency £100m financial guarantee to Glasgow Life; to help shepherd it through the COVID crisis. However this is a case of ‘giving with one hand, taking with the other’. According to Glasgow Life themselves, the City Council has cut the service-fee paid to the charity to £72.8m (2021/22).
The GMB union has pointed out that this service-fee reduction represents a £5m cut in funding to Glasgow Life.
It is worth highlighting the importance of the service-fee to the financial viability of the charity. According to Glasgow Life’s own annual review for 2018/19 approximately 65.5% of its entire income derived from the City Council’s Service-Fee. So a £5m cut to that would disproportionately impact the charity. Especially when the revenues derived from leisure and cultural activities have been lost due to the pandemic. According to the 2018/19 annual review 25.4% of its total income came from leisure and cultural activities.
So we can begin to see the shape of things. Glasgow Life loses a quarter of its budget as it is forced to lock down its facilities. This is followed up by the SNP-run City Council hammering it’s Service Fee derived income to the tune of £5m.
Perhaps this is why the charity has been forced to announce that even with the £100m ‘financial safety’ funding the City Council has pledged, it’s still unable to afford to reopen all its facilities.
As of July this year, 80 of its 171 facilities remained shut. The charity explained that it would be
“unrealistic to expect that it can raise significant additional income this year that will support the reopening of venues beyond the 91 already announced”
Unrealistic indeed. If only the SNP run City Council had not seen fit to slash £5m off the organisation’s budget at a time it faced unprecedented headwinds from a global health pandemic. Perhaps then we would not be seeing as many as 500 job losses from libraries, museums and sports centres?
If Glasgow Life was properly funded by our city council, perhaps we wouldn’t also witness the disaster that has befallen the iconic Glasgow Winter Gardens? Under the SNP administration the greenhouse has went from being a home to tropical plants to a derelict site.
The picture reveals the sorry state the Victorian-era greenhouse has fallen into, compared to its 2009 glory shown on the right.
Dr Elspeth King, a former curator for the People’s Palace told The Herald that
“We are totally gutted by this and devastated to see the condition of it. We were told People's Palace will always be a museum of social history and that the Winter Gardens would always be the Winter Gardens with free entry.”
"It is clear to us that there is obviously other intentions for it.”
The £937m of SNP cuts to Scottish local governments over the last eight years can sometimes seem a little too abstract. But now we can see a concrete example of the impact such devastating local government austerity can have. Including short changing Glasgow Life, and abandoning our city’s civic heritage to dilapidation and ruin.
Glasgow deserves better than Susan Aitken, and her SNP administration. Local elections are next year.
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