Aberdeen City Council chiefs are on course to underspend their budget by nearly £5million.
Despite regular complaints about their Scottish Government funding levels, the north-east authority will have around £4.6million left from its budget at the end of the year according to a new report.
The report, due before the finance committee next Thursday, reads: “The indications are that an underspend of £4.6 million against budget is achievable.
“This is a favourable movement of £0.7 million from the last reported underspend of £3.9 million.
“Having now passed the year end, the indications are that the level of underspend will increase further.”
It added: “The council has a number of earmarked reserves for specific projects. It is currently predicted that £8.4 million of these will be used during 2015/16.”
The Press and Journal revealed this week that Aberdeen receives the lowest Scottish Government funding per head of any council in Scotland.
But opposition SNP finance spokesman Graham Dickson said the administration were being “hypocrites”.
The Torry and Ferryhill councillor said: “I think it’s interesting to see Aberdeen is managing to achieve everything while having a fairly hefty underspend.
“It’s good to see that, for once, councillor [Willie] Young has not overspent his budget as we have seen with so many capital projects around the city.
“We should also remember the hypocrisy of the administration who bitterly complained about the Scottish Government’s recent underspend, then come forward with one of their own.”
But last night finance convener Mr Young defended the administration’s spending.
He said: “We have a £600million budget so this underspend is actually less than 1% off what we were predicting which we have to thank our officers for.
“We have an underspend, but this is mainly due to us not being able to employ as many people as we want due to long-running problems in recruiting staff into the public sector.
“I do think the people of Aberdeen will be pleased about the fact we will invest this underspend into our capital programme which means we don’t have to borrow more.
“We are the lowest funded council and if the opposition had their chance, Audit Scotland would be back managing our money again.”
