'Calamity' Kate refuses to quit as pressure grows over £50m crisis

THE leader of crisis-hit Aberdeen city council yesterday defiantly refused to resign in the face of a mounting storm of protest over the scale of the authority's £50 million budget cut target.

Councillor Kate Dean was accused by opposition councillors of heaping "calamity upon calamity" on the running of the city authority at a meeting of the council's urgent business committee.

But she angrily turned on the opposition and called on them to stop sniping from the sidelines and join the administration in helping chart of way out of the city's financial crisis.

The bitter exchange came at the first meeting of the authority since the revelations earlier this week in a leaked confidential report that the city council must make cuts totalling £49.7 million this year – almost double the previous estimate of £27 million.

Councillor Dean claimed at the meeting that the £49.7 million total was not new and that all the figures about the council's savings had been contained in the budget papers, published earlier this year, or approved by the council at a meeting last October.

She said: "This is not a case of suddenly doubling the savings. These are savings and figures that we have all been aware of for some time."

But Councillor Willie Young, the secretary of the Labour group, told Councillor Dean she was "deluded" if she believed "everybody" knew about the £49.7 million figure.

He claimed: "The fact remains that everybody thought it was £27 million in budget cuts rather than £49.7 million. Indeed, when speaking to some of the members of your own group they were of that opinion."

Councillor Young said the crisis had become an "embarrassment" for the city and claimed the business community "no longer had trust" in the council leadership.

He called on the leader to "consider" her position.

Councillor Dean's leadership was also criticised by another Labour councillor, Barney Crockett, who has been appointed as chair of the scrutiny panel.

He said: "We have long-term difficulties but short-term catastrophe. Calamity has been laid upon calamity in the last five years."

But Councillor Dean said: "As far as I am concerned I have been elected to do a job by the people of Aberdeen and by my colleagues around this council. I see no reason to stand down from that job."

The committee unanimously endorsed a series of recommendations to begin addressing the council's financial crisis. The 22 recommendations include a freeze on recruitment, a moratorium on new capital projects and a move towards a targeted early retirement programme and voluntary redundancy scheme for council employees.