Council Tax and Spending

East Lothian Council provides the county’s 110,000 residents with a wide range of services including education, adult and children’s wellbeing, planning, economic development, roads, housing, transportation, environmental health, refuse collection, street cleaning, recycling, food safety, trading standards, community development, sports, recreation, parks and countryside, libraries, museums, registration of births, deaths and marriages and burial grounds.

Around 4,842 (3,750 full-time equivalent) people work for the council.

There are 22 elected councillors:

• 10 Scottish Labour
• 4 Scottish Conservative
• 6 Scottish National Party
• 1 Scottish Green Party
• 1 Independent

Key strategic and policy decisions are taken by a cabinet of six Scottish Labour Councillors chaired by the Council Leader.

The East Lothian Council Plan

The 2022 – 2027 East Lothian Council Plan sets out our vision to create an even more prosperous, safe and sustainable East Lothian with a dynamic and thriving economy that allows our people to flourish.

It has seven key objectives:

• Recovery and Renewal – recovering from the COVID pandemic by investing in regeneration and a sustainable future

• Reduce poverty and Inequality – supporting our communities to deal with the growing levels of poverty and inequality

• Respond to the Climate Emergency – meeting our net zero climate change targets

• Growing our Economy - to increase sustainable and inclusive economic growth as the basis for a more prosperous East Lothian

• Growing our People - to give our children the best start in life and protect vulnerable and older people

• Growing our Communities - to give people a real say in the decisions that matter most and provide communities with the housing, transport links, community facilities and environment that will allow them to flourish

• Growing our Capacity - to deliver excellent services as effectively and efficiently as possible within our limited resources

Whilst the priorities in the Council Plan set out the ambition and priorities for the council in the medium to long-term, inevitably in the short to medium-term there are policy and service decisions that must be taken to balance the annual budget, which will impact on residents, service users and partners. Whilst these measures alone will not be enough to balance the budget, to help support East Lothian through these challenges, we will:

• Continue to work at transforming services and finding new ways of working.
• Seize opportunities to work even more closely with our partners, design and deliver our services more collaboratively and invest in new technology to make the council more efficient and productive.
• Continue to seek the views of residents to inform the decisions we take around the budget, council tax and the future of our services.
• Work with Scottish Government to raise awareness of local issues and secure the powers and resources to sustain and improve outcomes for East Lothian residents.