The Scottish Government has been accused of “selling the next generation short” after an almost 40 per cent drop in spending on play parks.
According to the Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) – a dataset that logs local government statistics – net expenditure dropped from £169 million in real terms in 2010-11 to around £104.5m in 2020-21, a fall of 38 per cent.
Real terms expenditure per 1,000 of population also fell from £32,377 to £19,112 – a drop of some 41 per cent.
Labour local government spokesman Mark Griffin said playparks have been “left to rust” because of cuts to council funding.
“This time last year the SNP were promising to renew every playpark in Scotland, but the ballots had barely finished being counted by the time they ditched this pledge,” he added.