Your Party Glasgow councillors to table People’s Budget

Members of Your Party Glasgow have announced they are to table a budget which refuses to cut services and builds towards returning public amenities into the hands of the people of Glasgow.

The party’s three councillors have agreed a budget proposal that includes transformative measures which could take steps to ending homelessness in the city, and moving workers to a four-day working week with no loss of pay.

In the line of fire are private contractors, who currently deliver council services at over-inflated prices, private landlords who exploit tenants across the city and worsen Glasgow’s housing crisis, and the Scottish government which has yet again left Glasgow in the lurch through systemic underfunding.

Key proposals from Your Party Glasgow councillors include:

• Bringing services in-house (£0): A cross-party working group will be established to investigate which roles should be brought back into council employ from overpriced contractors. This working group should include trade union representation from appropriate unions for sections under consideration.
• Re-establishing council housing (£150k): Funding to be provided for development of a route map to reintroducing council housing directly managed by Glasgow city council. This will ease the housing and homelessness crisis in the city and also investigate the purchasing of empty homes to be utilised for temporary homelessness accommodation as a first point of action on homelessness. Funding includes a budget for any required legal support for this work, which will be complete by the end of 2026.
• 4-Day Work Week for all Council Employees (£150k): Funding to be provided for development of a routemap to reduce staff working hours by 20%, while maintaining the same rate of pay. This will be completed by 2026 and will be led by a cross-party working group of councillors.

Current shortfalls will be met by increasing council tax by 5%. This is likely to be one of the lowest proposals in Scotland.

It is anticipated that a move to a four-day working week would save the council much more money than it would cost to implement due to a drastic reduction in staff absence, and an improvement in retention rate for the council.

Meanwhile, by bringing Glasgow city council services back in-house, councillors would be putting public services back into public control so they can be run in the interests of the people of Glasgow.

Restoring Glasgow’s council housing stock

The most eye-catching proposal is the attempt to move the council towards restarting a system of council house building and building up a stock of existing homes under council control – both of which will help to alleviate the worsening housing and homelessness crises engulfing the city.

Glasgow’s council housing stock was decimated as a result of a mass transfer of stock in 2003, followed by decades of private landlords and developers exploiting a lack of public interest housebuilding.

At present, Glasgow City Council owns no traditional council housing, despite over 600,000 people living in the city – and 8,446 homeless applications made in Glasgow in 2024/25.

Glasgow city council’s legal team has confirmed the budget proposals put forward by Your Party are competent and can thus be voted on by councillors of all parties on 24 February.

A proposal which would have seen fees doubled for the owners of short-term lets and HMO flats – both of which play a significant part in the city’s housing crisis – was ruled out by the council’s legal team.

Your Party’s three councillors are now appealing to representatives of other parties – including the ruling SNP council – to put the people of Glasgow first and back this budget, which will not do further harm to public services.

Councillor Seonad Hoy, Your Party councillor for Hillhead, said:

For years, Glasgow’s public services have been decimated by austerity, forced upon us by cuts to budgets handed down by the UK and Scottish Governments. As Your Party councillors, we are taking a stand against any further cuts.

We are putting forward a budget which includes proposals to empower council staff to work shorter weeks at no loss of pay, which has proven to lead to a happier, more productive workforce and cost savings where it has been implemented elsewhere in the UK.

We are also proposing to begin rebuilding council housing stock, initially by bringing empty homes back under the council’s control. This would enable the council to allocate housing to homeless households at a lower cost, and to provide a more seamless service to homeless people and families.

We hope that other parties are willing to engage with our proposals to allow these groundbreaking initiatives to progress.

In drafting the proposal, councillors were joined by a working group made up of volunteers from the party and other groups, including trade unions, who have worked to create this People’s Budget for ordinary Glaswegians.

Councillor Dan Hutchison, Your Party councillor for Govan, added:

Councillors shouldn’t be taking decisions based on how they manage decline. They should be taking them based on what’s best for their constituents, and the people of Glasgow. That is what we have put forward.

Our message to the SNP, Greens and others is clear: the ball is in your court. You can choose to further decimate the communities you represent, or invest in change. The choice is yours.

Featured image via the Canary