COUNCIL services are being “destroyed” by cuts to their budgets, Nicola Sturgeon has been told.

Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader, said the budget is imposing a real terms cut of more than £300m across the country.

The Glasgow Times reported this week on the scale of the cuts to Glasgow with council officers presenting options that include further cuts to bin collections, raising parking charges and axing school crossing patrols.

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Sarwar challenged the First Minister in Holyrood over council budgets and said councillors across the country are saying the cuts are a threat to councils.

He said: “This SNP government is leaving councils the length and breadth of Scotland in a dire position.

“Despite what Nicola Sturgeon claims, independent analysis shows that the budgets councils have control over have been cut by £304 million in real terms. That means devastating consequences for vital services.

“Will the First Minister finally admit she is cutting local government budgets?”

The First Minister said the Government was increasing budgets in cash terms by £570m and challenged Sarwar to tell her where the extra money he wants should come from.

She said: “This government is increasing local government budgets. The resources available to local government in terms of next year’s budget, if parliament passes it, the increase will be £570m.

“Of course inflation is sky high right now, that’s not as a result of policies of this government, and of course, that is affecting the budget of this government as well.”

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Sturgeon added: “Last week, I invited Anas Sarwar to point to other areas of the budget that he thought we could take resources from if he wants us to give more money to local government.

“He may have sent those to my office, I don’t know, in which case I will look at those, but I suspect he hasn’t come up with any reasonable, realistic or credible proposals to do that.”

Glasgow will set its budget next week and Susan Aitken, leader of the council, said in the Glasgow Times that were the spending gap to be met by raising council tax it would cost an average of £50 per month for each household, a 25% rise.

She said that will not happen and called on the Scottish Government to give the council more control over how it spends its budget.

Sarwar added: “There is no way for councils to balance the books without further destroying local services.

“All of Scotland’s 32 councils are united in opposition to this government’s cuts.”

He said councillors said cuts have already fallen “disproportionately on council services, libraries, culture and leisure, sports, youth work, waste, roads and parks”.

He added those were cuts that have already happened in previous years and the government plans “put the financial viability of local government at risk”.

Sturgeon said the increase was a real terms rise of £160m and added: “This time every year councils look at a range of proposals.

“I’ve seen proposals from Glasgow City Council today. These are options that no decisions have been taken on.

“I remember claims a few years ago there were going to be 15,000 job cuts across local government. Since then jobs have increased by 19,000.”