Setting our budget today (Thursday 20 February) Councillors identified a £1.8bn spending programme focused on investing in services for children, older residents and those most in need of our support.

An increase in Council Tax rates will be used to balance the budget and to increase spending on frontline services like education, social care and road safety around schools; in direct response to calls from local residents during extensive budget consultation.

Council Leader Jane Meagher said:

“Together we’ve been able to deliver a balanced budget and prioritise spend on the areas residents have told us they care about most, while staying true to the Council’s core commitments of tackling poverty and climate change and ‘getting the basics right’.

“We’ve updated our plans at every step, taking stock of the thousands of responses gathered during our public consultation calling for us to invest in our frontline services.

“Residents and community groups have been loud and clear that people want spending on schools and roads to be protected, sharing concerns about the local impact of the national social care crisis, and that they’d be willing to see Council Tax raised to make this happen.

“We’ve listened and we’ve gone further – agreeing record spend on over a dozen new and existing school buildings, specific funding for road safety around schools and substantial extra money for the Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership.  We’ll be tackling Edinburgh’s housing and homelessness emergencies and investing in our communities, including money towards roads and a new Blackhall Library. 

“For all that, we have had to make many difficult decisions to make substantial savings and I’m grateful to all Councillors for their input. We remain the lowest funded local authority in Scotland, and I will continue to call for fairer funding for Edinburgh.”

Finance and Resources Convener Cllr Mandy Watt said:

“Residents are aware of the financial challenges we face following years of underfunding, and they’ve told us in their thousands that they want to see vital services protected and enhanced. I’m pleased that we’ll be able to use the £26 million raised from an 8% increase in Council Tax to protect and improve these services.

“Huge pressures on health and social care and housing remain unaddressed nationally and while this Budget does everything within our power to protect local services, we need greater action to be taken at a government level.

“A huge amount of work has taken place to consider our budget options, with detailed proposals reported to Committees and tweaked in the months leading up to today’s final decision. I’d like to thank Council officers for all their work on this.”

Substantial spend on schools

In the highest spending on school buildings in recent years, £296m will be invested towards five new campuses (Granton Waterfront, Newcraighall, St Catherine’s, Gilmerton Station and Builyeon), five extensions (Hillwood, Queensferry and Frogston primaries, plus Castlebrae and Craigmount high schools), plus a replacement building for Fox Covert.

We’ll invest an additional £30m towards upgrading special needs schools, with improvements designed to allow as many pupils as possible to see their needs met locally.

An additional £6.6m will be spent on road safety, particularly around schools. A further £0.5m will be used to drive improvements in educational attainment and £1m will be invested in Holiday Hubs, with options to make this scheme more sustainable to be explored.

Funding will also be protected around enhanced pupil support bases, pathways for pupil support assistants, transition teachers and devolved school budgets.

Extra support for social care

Up to £66m could be spent on Health and Social Care facilities in light of increasing demands for services, a growing and aging population and the rising costs to the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (EIJB) of delivering these services.

As part of this, Councillors have agreed to set up a new Innovation and Transformation Fund – subject to match-funding by NHS Lothian – to leverage additional capital investment worth up to £16m.

Additional funding will provide support for Adult Health and Social Care worth £14m plus £5.6m will be put towards adaptations, to help people to live in their own homes independently.

Up to £2.5m from a Reform Reserve will be allocated to third sector support, plus income maximisation of £1m, following challenges with reduced funding available to charities and voluntary organisations from the EIJB.

More budget spent on roads

Responding to the results of our budget consultation – where people said they’d like to see money spent on roads, we’ll spend £40m on roads and transport in the year ahead.

Focusing on areas identified by a Women’s Safety survey, where certain parts of the city were described as feeling unsafe, as part of this spend we will invest £12.5m this year and next improving roads, pavements, streetlights.

We will invest a further £6.6m in Safer Routes to School and travelling safely.

Prioritising our communities and climate

Councillors have committed to climate remaining a key priority and over the next 12 months and an additional £2.9m will support actions with city partners to address Edinburgh’s climate and nature emergencies.

Supporting a Just Transition, affordable, net zero housing including 3,500 new, sustainable homes in the £1.3bn transformation of Granton Waterfront will be taken forward.

An additional £15m is planned to sustainably replace Blackhall Library, which has been closed due to RAAC, while £0.5m will be used to increase enforcement to keep the city cleaner and safer. Around £0.5m will also be used to create better data to support local decision making.

Focused poverty prevention

Councillors have committed to accelerate the work of the End Poverty Edinburgh Action Plan, tackle the city’s Housing Emergency and review the way we support the third sector in Edinburgh.

We will continue to support the Regenerative Futures Fund which will help local communities to lead poverty prevention and deliver change.

We’ll invest £50m in purchasing and building suitable temporary accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.

Following agreement of the Housing Revenue Account budget, we will continue work to retrofit high rise blocks and spend £14.8m towards new affordable housing and upgrades to void properties, to get them back into use as homes.

Council rents will be raised by 7% to raise much needed new funds to upgrade housing, with Councillors also agreeing to increase the city’s Tenant Hardship Fund by 7% in line with this rent rise.

Changes to Council Tax

All Council Tax rates will rise by 8% from April 2025 to allow the above investment to take place.

The new rates will be: