Message from our Chief Executive: Glasgow City Council budget update Friday 16 February

Dear colleagues

You may have seen that Glasgow City Council set its budget for 2024-27 after agreeing a range of savings and income generation options at yesterday’s full council meeting.

It is likely you will also read or hear more about these measures as they relate to Glasgow Life and the wider council family in the media over the coming days and weeks.

Glasgow Life is directly impacted by the budget-setting process. As our core funder, Glasgow City Council provides us with a service fee to operate venues and deliver programmes and activities on their behalf. These fees represent a significant majority of our income every year.

As I outlined earlier this week, Glasgow City Council is facing a funding gap of more than £107m over the next three financial years.

Having been asked to put forward a series of savings and income generation options to help close this funding gap, ultimately £9.8 million of our options were included in the final budget.

The budget also includes a welcome £1 million of one-off funding for the expansion of our Live Well community referral programme to help people across Glasgow live happier, healthier, and ultimately better lives.

In supporting Glasgow City Council to deliver a balanced budget, we have done all that we can to protect our core services and minimise reductions by focussing on generating income.

We committed to delivering £27.4m of earned income in 2023-24 and we are on track to achieve this when the financial year ends in March.

Glasgow City Council’s three-year approach to budget setting provides Glasgow Life with the opportunity to set out an ambitious target of growing our income by more than £7 million over the next three financial years. It also gives us time to continue sustainable change across the organisation.

As well as communicating this to the media, our partners and stakeholders, tenants, funders and communities across the city, your Head of Service and managers will continue to discuss with you what this means for our workforce in the weeks and months ahead.  

In the meantime, I want to thank all of you for your resilience and hard work. Each and every day, more than 2,000 of you, helped by Glasgow Life’s volunteers, deliver our much-loved and highly valued programmes, events and experiences across Glasgow to the people who need them most.

We remain committed to our mission of enhancing the city’s mental, physical and economic wellbeing through the power of culture and sport, and I am confident we are doing all that we can to forge a positive future for our charity.

All of Glasgow City Council’s 2024-27 budget savings can be viewed on the council’s website at https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/councillorsandcommittees/viewDoc.asp?c=P62AFQDN812UZLUT81

Should you have any questions regarding our budget settlement, please raise these with your Line Manager or Head of Service.

Thank you.

Susan

Susan Deighan

Chief Executive

Managers: Please share this with colleagues who do not have regular email access or are not at work at the moment.