SCOTTISH Borders Council still expects to shed 123 full-time equivalent posts in the next financial year – despite a late funding boost.

The council had been facing up to an £8.28m reduction in the annual grant it receives from the Scottish Government to support revenue spending.

And with pay awards and increments, that anticipated funding gap had risen to £9.5m.

But on Friday came confirmation that, as part of the previous afternoon’s budget deal between the SNP and the Greens at Holyrood, an extra £130m would be made available to local government in Scotland in 2017/18.

And SBC’s share of that revenue windfall is £2.88m.

“This means we can look again at some of the less palatable cuts we were facing in order to balance the books,” said council leader David Parker this week.

The news came the day after a press briefing at which Mr Parker outlined how his council’s ruling administration planned to achieve a £9.5m saving.

The list of targets included:

£1.39m – from staff reductions and redeployment of staff “to deliver services in line with service demand”; £357,000 – from the redesign of the delivery model to support children with additional support needs; ££724,000 – from education support services following reviews of outdoor education and the school library services.

£310,000 – from the creation of new cleaning services for council properties, including schools; £1.67m – from implementing an alternative model for the delivery of care and roads services and the integration of staff in customer services, welfare benefits and housing.

£750,000 – from efficiencies in renegotiating commissioned services for children and adults with external providers. £526,000 – from reduction in funding for culture and sports in a joint approach with Live Borders which is seeking to reduce its workforce through voluntary severance/early retirement.

£261,000 – from implementation of a revised asset management strategy; £200,000 – from efficiencies in waste management, including in kerbside collection services; £141,000 – from introducing charges in 27 public conveniences; £200,000 – from a review of subsidised bus services and the re-tendering of contracts.

£1.29m – from the outsourcing of IT services to private company CGI and subsequent efficiency improvements in finance, HR and procurement; £237,000 – from the “more effective deployment” of social work and care staff in delivering services to older people.

£245,000 – from continuing the replacement of sodium street lights with LED installations; £110,000 – from reviewing care packages for both older people and adults with learning disabilities; £451,000 – from increasing fees across a range of services offered by the council, including planning applications, music tuition, school lets and trade waste collections.

How the extra £2.88m will impact on that list of savings is being thrashed out this week by senior councillors and officers with a revised budget proposal due to be presented to tomorrow’s full council meeting.

Mr Parker told the Border Telegraph: “As you can imagine, elected members have been coming forward with suggestions about how we can use this money to mitigate the impact of the cuts.

“Based on that feedback I would expect, for instance, the proposals to cut bus subsidies by £200,000 and to reduce outdoor education provision could be dropped.

“There is also a strong case for rethinking our plans to cut the financial support we give to Live Borders which runs sports facilities, museums, libraries and community centres and is looking to reduce its workforce.”

However, Mr Parker said he did not expect any change to his administration’s plans to cut the number of full-time equivalent posts at the council by 123 in 2017/18.

“While we welcome the fact that the cut in Scottish Government support is not as drastic as we anticipated, we still face a very challenging financial future which, in my view, will get worse before it gets better.

“A key part of our strategy in meeting that challenge is to review staffing, particularly at senior level, and thus maximise efficiencies in the way we do business.

“We have thus been preparing for potential staff reductions and currently more vacancies than the targeted reduction. This will not mean 123 people losing their jobs.”

As previously reported, Council Tax, frozen for the past nine years, will rise on April 1 by 3 per cent for Band A-D households and by between 10.7 per cent and 26.2 per cent for Band D-H households.