Irvine Community Council notes the Cabinet’s proposal for a £1.496m “Our Places, Our Communities Fund,” and the Council’s own explanation that it is to be funded from an underspend in the 2025/26 budget.
We welcome investment in communities. We do not welcome the way this one has come about, and residents are entitled to ask some straightforward questions.
For two years running, North Ayrshire Council has told residents that money was desperately tight. It raised Council Tax by 7% for 2025/26 and a further 8.5% for 2026/27. It ran repeated “have your say on the cuts” exercises that put libraries, the Arran Outdoor Education Centre, leisure facilities, ranger services and bin collections under public threat. The message throughout was that savings were unavoidable.
Yet the same 2025/26 budget has now closed with an underspend large enough for the Cabinet to set aside £1.496m — and the Council is explicit that this is only “part of” the underspend. The full figure is larger still.
That sits awkwardly with the story residents were told. If the Council was on course to underspend, why the two consecutive above-inflation Council Tax rises? Why the anxiety of repeated consultations on cutting valued services? And why is the surplus now being routed into a new, Cabinet-controlled fund whose criteria are, in the Council’s own words, “currently being finalised,” rather than used transparently to protect the services residents were asked about, or to ease the burden on hard-pressed households?
Before Full Council votes later this month, we are asking the Council to publish:
- the full value of the 2025/26 underspend, and where it arose;
- why that underspend was not identified and redirected during the year to protect services; and
- the criteria, decision-making and accountability arrangements for the proposed fund.
Community investment is welcome. Community investment that doubles as a feel-good announcement, drawn from money residents were told did not exist, a year out from the next Council elections, deserves proper scrutiny. We intend to seek it.
