LATER this month, East Lothian Council will set its budget for the next year – and it will be a tough one.

Because the Scottish Government has effectively pared the main grant that provides 80 per cent of its total spend, expect them to use the power to jack up your council tax by the maximum three per cent allowed.

But this need not be so. As well as the £1m that could be found for education (as explained two weeks ago), if councils shook themselves out of their cosy routines and became more businesslike in their operations they wouldn’t need to fleece residents as the only alternative.

Some examples of where they could get much more creative include:

  • Their own loss-making cafeteria on Haddington’s Peffers Place was transformed into the popular Loft by people with vision and gumption;
  • Enjoyleisure ought to be a profitable enterprise going head-to-head with the likes of Bannatyne’s gym and not seen as some sleepy extension of social work;
  • Landscape does a bang-up job of keeping our green spaces lush and welcoming – so why not let them bid as factors on all these new housing estates instead of the expensive rip-offs that developers lock buyers into in their title deeds?;
  • Countryside does an equally bang-up job with our wild spaces – but their modest programme of walks and talks could be greatly expanded to widen/deepen the experience of our many tourists;
  • Ice cream vans park illegally and pull in thousands a day, so licence their stances for a share of the action; and
  • The good people of Musselburgh own the racetrack there but, despite millions in public money invested in the Queen’s Stand and stables, it operates as a private fiefdom that repaid nothing more than free raceday hospitality boxes for previous Labour administrations.

But the business with most potential is among councils themselves.

There is no good reason beyond inertia why all 32 councils need their own back-office operations. Although councils should remain local and responsive, payroll, IT, accounts, etc. could all be done at least regionally – with a resulting saving in the millions.

Once, council management were poorly paid. But with top council officials now pulling down six-figure salaries, they should be thinking out of the box with ideas like the above.

The trouble is they are saddled with a pedestrian administration of Labour councillors who lack either vision or bottle to do so.