The South Lanarkshire Labour Group have moved against the council budget for the upcoming financial year.
The budget was agreed on Wednesday and brought forward by the cross party budget group - formed of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Independents.
Labour were involved in initial talks with the group, but dropped out after four meetings - thereafter, the group created its own budget and presented it to the full council.
Leader of the group, Joe Fagan, said: “This week SNP budget lets down every community crying out for investment.
"SNP and Tory councillors have voted against decisive action on the cost of living crisis and shown how out of touch they are with the people they are supposed to represent.
“This budget fails the fairness test – it does not help enough with living costs. It fails the frontline test – it does not deliver the cash boost local services need. It fails the transparency test – it does nothing to improve scrutiny of how budget decisions are made.”
In Labour’s budget an increase of 2.2 per cent in council tax was proposed, whereas the cross budget party proposed a 2.5 per cent surge.
Both are an improvement to the original budget paper’s proposal of 3.5 per cent.
The Labour group also proposed to invest in frontline services, by injecting £3.239m into supporting the recovery of the services.
As well as this, the group proposed to remove charges for second waste uplifts by investing £650,000.
The group too proposed a cost of living action plan which would see a £100,000 investment into providing support for older and vulnerable people to install interlinked fire and smoke alarms.
Also, it was proposed that those eligible for a school clothing grant would receive an additional payment of £100.
Councillor Fagan added: “From taking action on fly-tipping to helping with new fire alarm costs, Labour’s alternative aimed to meet the real needs of local people.
"Our £3m 'frontline first fund' would have boosted local services and our 'cost of living action plan' would have delivered a £100 bonus to top up the school clothing grant.
"Labour’s proposals could have achieved all of this with council tax capped at 2.2 per cent.”
Fellow Labour councillor, Bert Thomson (Blantyre), said: “I obviously back Joe here, my priorities are about the young, vulnerable and elderly.
"There’s a wee bit of that in the cross-party budget but certainly a lot more from Labour.”
Liberal Democrat councillor Robert Brown (Rutherglen South) criticised Labour’s budget.
He said: “Now the Labour Party’s objections to the budget process are, in my view, trivial and unconvincing; everyone and their dog knows that Labour are the only party in this chamber who have had no influence whatsoever on the budget.
“Just by way of an example, they are proposing to allow people to have free waste uplift but the actual charge for waste uplifts were brought in by the last Labour administration; it seems a little odd that this is one of their priorities.
“I don’t really think much of the Labour budget, it doesn’t say much on new ideas, there’s not much of anything different and to some extent it echoes some of the things in the administration’s budget as well.”
The cross-party budget group’s approved budget will see investments in volunteering, community led activities and a community wish scheme, additional cardio fitness and rehabilitation equipment, a children and young persons fund, investments in tackling fly-tipping and improvements of pavements and footpaths.
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