West Dunbartonshire announces council tax hike of 11.5%

Council tax in West Dunbartonshire will rise by a 11.5% after the majority of local councillors agreed to the hike to bridge the £7.7m budget gap.

Elected members were presented with a range of saving options on Wednesday, March 5 to help the local authority which is facing significant financial difficulties for 2025/26 and beyond.

It comes as the country faces the biggest council tax increases in 20 years after the nationwide freeze came to an end.

North Lanarkshire and Scottish Borders councils have already voted for a 10% increase, while Fife went for 8.2% and councillors in Edinburgh backed an 8% hike.

On Wednesday afternoon the Labour administration proposed an 11.5% of which 6.16% will be used to support partners in health and social care, West Dunbartonshire Leisure Trust as well as Argyll and Bute Integrated Joint Board.

The other 5.34% will support council wide services.

During the meeting the SNP proposed an 8.5% council tax increase instead and said using £2m worth of reserves meaning no savings options would need to be taken.

Councillor Jim Bollan, of the West Dunbartonshire community party, had proposed a 10% hike.

West Dunbartonshire council leader Martin Rooney said: “I would like to thank all the managers of staff in the 2025/26 budget.

“After years of trying to find some financial sustainability for our council and the people it serves, we are still struggling to significantly reduce the significant revenue deficit.

“It seems that every time we take one step forward, we end up taking two steps back. The continuing financial instability and the ongoing need to make savings means it has become impossible to identify options to balance the budget while continuing to provide services in the same way.

“I have made repeated calls for fairer funding for West Dunbartonshire and my Labour colleagues at all levels have echoed those pleas. We ask for fairness but instead we have had systematic and sustained cuts to revenue funding since 2007 and the pressure this council is facing is a direct result of that.

“So what choice do we have when we are asked to do more with less. The answer is no choice. This continued lack of funding has put us in an impossible position.

“These are not the choices anyone in this room wants to make but the bottom line is this, we must balance our budgets to work towards a sustainable future for West Dunbartonshire.”

Speaking on their proposal to raise council tax by 8.5% the SNP group said this would be below the average in Scotland as of March 5, 2025.

Councillor Ian Dickson said: “The people of Scotland are persistently paying the price of West Minster decisions that hurt our public services, economy and society.

“We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to protect public services and make things easier in the face of the ongoing cost of living crisis.

“This proposal includes no cuts to services and no compulsory redundancies. The budget rejects the savings options and protects funding for several organisations.”