Our challenges
East Lothian Council is facing challenges. Rising demand for, and cost of, services and reductions in overall central government funding means doing more with less.
- Cuts in funding and pressures to increase spending mean that the council has to achieve £56m in planned efficiencies in order to balance the budgets between 2024/25 and 2028/29.
- East Lothian has one of the fastest rates of growth in population in Scotland from 104,000 to over 120,000 by 2037 – about 1,000 a year.
- The number of people aged 75 year or over will double, as will the number of people with dementia, meaning a big rise in care services for elderly people with dementia.
- The number of children 0-15 years old will grow by over 15%, so we need at least two new primary schools and extensions to many of our schools.
- A large proportion of the additional funding that we will receive in 2024/25 is linked to the delivery of existing or new policy commitments, so does not help to reduce the funding gap which the council is facing.
- In most areas both demand for services and the cost of delivering those services has been increasing in recent years but the funding we receive has not increased at the same rate. This is a particular challenge for East Lothian, where our growing population means that the cost of serving our communities is increasing, while our funding is not.
- In order to continue supporting our communities, we will need to think differently about the services we provide, and how we do this to ensure that our limited resources have the right impact where it is needed.