Blow To North Economy Assistance As HIE Gets Cut To Its Budget

29th December 2023

​The Scottish Government has delivered a huge blow to economic assistance in the Highlands and Islands as Highlands and Islands enterprise has had a 13% cut to it budget for 23/24.

HIE's budget for 2024-25 will drop to £54.8 million, down from £62.8 million in the current year. In previous years its budget was even higher.

Added to big holes in council budgets this will make huge difference and affect jobs in the public sector.

It will make it harder for businesses to get support for new and existing projects. That in turn will probably affect jobs.

The budget announcements referred to the total sum of the budget but lacked a lot of the consequential details that had hidden cuts.

The pain will be felt not just in 2024/25 but also in later years as following years budgets tend to be based on the last years sum. The councils are likely to try to fill the gaps in some part by using reserves built up in previous years. For most councils that can only happen once as once a reserve is used it is gone for good. But even using reserves will not stem the cuts required to balance budgets.

The Scottish Government has a £1.5billion deficit and is passing that down the line to public agencies.

It is not hard to see where some of the huge deficit of Scottish Government has come from with some very wasteful projects being the public eye for the last few years.