EMERGENCY measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis have left East Lothian Council facing an overspend of £7.5million.

Calls have been made to the Scottish and UK Governments to honour assurances given at the start of lockdown to meet such costs accrued by local authorities as they faced huge pressures to support community services and residents.

At the first full meeting of East Lothian Council since March this week, its head of finance said there was still a huge gap between the funds provided and promised.

Jim Lamond told the virtual meeting that uncertainty over whether the funds would be fully reimbursed or not left the council facing tough decisions on potentially cutting services to meet the shortfall.

He said: “We need to be looking to national governments to give us reassurance, the same reassurance given at the start of this pandemic when there was a call to arms.”

Councillor Norman Hampshire (Lab), depute council leader, said the local authority had been “given a commitment” by the Scottish Government that funding would be available to meet the costs of lockdown and recovery.

And Councillor Willie Innes (Lab), council leader, warned that a failure to fund the local authority would leave services in East Lothian “decimated”.

He called on the Scottish Government to distribute funds he said had been passed on from Westminster and were not being used.

Mr Innes said: “There is over £1billion still to be allocated by the Scottish Government. If we do not receive additional funds from the Scottish Government to provide services then our services will be decimated.”

Mr Innes urged councillors to agree an amendment to the recommendations of the report before them which would ask the council to write to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon urging the Scottish Government to commit to meeting the total expenditure of  the council’s “Covid cost”.

The minority Labour administration leader’s amendment was passed after an addition by Councillor Stuart Currie, SNP Group leader – instructing the council to also write to the UK Government and ask them to meet COSLA demands for an interest break on loans from the Public Works Loans Board (PWLB) and increased borrowing powers for the Scottish Government – was accepted.

However, Conservative councillors opposed the amendment, later accusing the administration of “kowtowing” to the SNP.

Councillor Craig Hoy (Con) said, in a statement after the meeting: “Only the SNP Government will be able explain why Finance Secretary Kate Forbes refuses to properly fund East Lothian Council.

“Rather than Labour kowtowing to the SNP by calling for the Scottish Government to be given more borrowing powers, we should be focussing our efforts on demanding the missing millions the Scottish Government has failed to pass on to councils.”

The Conservative Group said it would write to the  First Minister and Finance Secretary itself asking for the funds to be distributed.

Councillor Lachlan Bruce, newly-appointed leader of the opposition and Conservative Group leader, said: “Following years of chronic underfunding by the Scottish Government, Covid-19 has pushed us to the edge.

“We need urgent answers – and significant funding from the Scottish Government – if we are to avoid huge cuts to frontline services which will have a long-lasting and damaging impact.”

But Mr Hampshire accused the Conservative Group of hypocrisy.

He said: “It was extremely disappointing that the Conservative Group failed to support the Labour administration’s motion to write to the Scottish and UK Governments.

“The letter was to ask them to honour their commitment to fully fund all the actions that the council were required to deliver to protect our communities from Covid-19.

“It is completely hypocritical of them to try and criticise us for proposing to increase debt when their own Government has increased the UK national debt to a record peacetime high of £2 trillion.”

The council agreed to write to the two Governments calling for more funding and support for COSLA requests by 15 votes to seven.

Mr Hampshire said the idea councils were facing huge debt after staff had worked so hard through the pandemic was “ridiculous”.

He said: “It is ridiculous that council staff have gone above and beyond to deliver services with the commitment [by the Scottish Government] that it would be fully funded and we are now sitting with a huge overspend in our budget.”

The Scottish Government had not provided a comment by the time the Courier went to press.