Mitigating Risks for Scotland's Communities
Local authorities in Scotland face particularly severe challenges and hard choices in reducing service expenditure as a result of the UK public sector spending cuts. Service cuts increase the risk of poverty and social exclusion for vulnerable service users. Their most significant impact will fall on disadvantaged and vulnerable households, pensioners, unemployed and low income groups who tend to be most reliant on public services. Scotland already experiences relatively high levels of poverty and deprivation in some of its major cities and also in parts of the highlands and islands.
Previous research focused on inequalities for households, for gender and for social, demographic, racial and other groups created by austerity measures deemed necessary for fiscal consolidation. Fiscal Consolidation refers to policies designed to remove the so-called ‘black hole’ in the UK public finances (i.e. ‘the structural gap’ whereby expenditures exceed revenues even during periods of economic prosperity and virtually full employment). This research project will complement those studies by considering how the mitigation of risk of adverse outcomes for disadvantaged communities can be addressed.