ARGYLL and Bute Council has emerged as one of the major winners in the Scottish Government’s ‘adjustment’ of the sums of money it plans to give Scotland’s local authorities.

According to official figures, Argyll and Bute will receive upwards of £3 million more than was originally expected when the first ‘local government finance settlement’ figures were announced in December.

The original allocation to Argyll and Bute of £187.451m for 2018-19 has now been revised to £190.478m – an increase of 1.62 per cent.

And the council's financial position looks to have improved further as a result of the SNP government's agreement with the Scottish Greens to provide more money for local government in return for backing the government's Scottish budget.

But the exact impact of both adjustments on the ruling Argyll and Bute administration’s job of setting a balanced budget remains unclear.

The council consulted on a programme of potential service cuts worth £2m at the end of last year – but prior to that the authority’s finance chiefs had warned that Argyll and Bute faced a budget gap of up to £8.5m in 2018-19, putting up to 90 jobs at risk.

Council leader and Helensburgh councillor Aileen Morton told the Advertiser: “When the local government settlement was first announced in December, Argyll and Bute looked set to be one of the lowest funded councils in Scotland. Our funding was cut by 4 per cent, compared to the Scottish average of 1.8 per cent.

“The recently announced changes to our settlement do provide a fairer level of funding compared to other local authorities but any reduction in funding means that, like all councils, we still have to consider carefully what budget decisions we make.

“Given the scale of the financial challenges we’ve already faced and those that lie ahead, this is not an easy time to be in local government.

“As we prepare for the budget meeting in February we will be considering the implications of the updated settlement amount.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The provisional local government finance settlement was issued on December 14, 2017.

“This marked the start of the statutory consultation period with local government on the terms of the settlement and the indicative allocations to individual authorities.

“As a result of this consultation period we have received a few suggested adjustments to be made to the provisional allocations.”

“Each local authority will receive their fair share of funding allocated using a needs based methodology agreed by COSLA.”