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Unison has called on the Scottish executive to give local authorities more resources or face key social strategies failing due to the crisis in recruiting social workers.

Unison’s call for action was presented in formal evidence to the Scottish parliament’s local government committee in which the union drew special attention to the lack of social workers. Speaking before the committee Joe Di Paolo, head of local government for Unison Scotland, said: "Unison is fully behind the ground breaking initiatives of the executive such as installing central heating in all pensioners’ homes, providing free personal care for the elderly and offering nursery and out of school care for children.

"However, we have grave concerns about the availability of workers and the skills that are needed to implement these programmes," he said.

Unison’s statement comes just one week after Edinburgh University announced it was to scrap its social work degree course due to the lack of applicants. At the same time it was revealed that the numbers graduating with degree qualifications in social work had fallen by a third in Scotland since 1996 to an all time low of 193 in 1999.

Di Paolo said: "We have made it very clear to the local government committee that more resources are required for long term planning, training and development if local authorities are going to have any chance of implementing these key social policies on behalf of the Scottish executive."