Cutting funding for speech therapy services in Edinburgh would hit the most vulnerable the hardest, the council has been warned ahead of the budget.

The body which represents the profession wrote to the council’s education boss this week after documents showed speech and language therapy could lose £3.4 million over the next four years as part of a plan to plug a £76m hole in the city’s finances.

Glenn Carter, head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in Scotland, said he was “deeply concerned” the authority was planning to pull “most” of its funding, warning it is “the wrong cut at the wrong time”.

He said: “Teachers are reporting alarming numbers of children coming to school with minimal spoken language.

“Almost 90% of early years practitioners report that they have seen an increase in the numbers and complexity of children with communication needs in Scotland.”

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