PUPIL support assistants are set to be spared the axe as part of Argyll and Bute Council’s budget-setting process in February.

Councillors have also decided that school crossing patrollers will be safe – even though those posts were not explicitly mentioned in the most recent list of savings options.

A report which went before the council’s policy and resources committee at its meeting on Thursday, December 10 showed that pupil support assistants were one of many savings options being proposed.

It was estimated that scrapping them would have seen 38 jobs lost, but councillors overseeing the budget process have confirmed that it will not be recommended.

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However, the report in December did not explicitly mention school crossing patrollers, whose posts have been under scrutiny as part of the last two budgets. The savings option was not taken by the council on either occasion.

The authority will set its 2021/22 budget at a meeting on Thursday, February 25. The meeting is set to be held via Skype due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The authority’s depute leader, Helensburgh Central Conservative councillor Gary Mulvaney, who chairs the council’s budget working group, said: “The working group that we put in place to look at this year’s budget, and which includes cross party members, unanimously agreed that potential savings around pupil support assistants and school crossing patrollers should not be taken. That is our recommendation to members.

“Whilst the council will not finally consider its budget until the end of February, and there are undoubtedly still difficult long term decisions to be made to safeguard services within tight public finances, it made sense meantime to provide some re-assurance to those particular staff affected.”

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In a column for this week's Advertiser, Lomond North SNP councillor Iain Shonny Paterson welcomed the plans to remove the savings options.

He said: “The council budget will soon be upon us and I have had many constituents contact me regarding various areas of concern.

“I am glad to see that the plans to look at savings in education, relating to school crossing patrol and pupil support assistants will no longer be part of the budget proposal.

“[This is] one that I and my SNP group were never going to support in the first place.”

Other savings options which were also listed for the policy and resources committee in December included streamlining the council’s property estate, reducing grass cutting services and holding more meetings virtually to cut down on councillor expenses.

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