The Scottish Government’s recently
published draft budget states “Local government is a critical
partner in leading the transformation of public services and enabling the
innovation, co-production and partnership-working that is needed to radically
improve wellbeing and outcomes for people and communities across Scotland.”
Fine
words, but is the Scottish Government putting its money where its mouth is?
Tucked
away in an annex to the budget document is a comparison of budget allocations
by portfolio since the SNP’s first full budget in 2008-9. I have extracted the
main portfolios and displayed them below as a chart and a table.
What
they show is that local government is the only major portfolio to show an
overall reduction in spending. The cynic might say, in difficult times push the
difficult decisions as far away from ministers as possible – the ‘not me guv’
school of spin.
Even
these tables mask real cuts in funding. The apparent increase in funding over
the next two years comes largely from increased revenue from Non-Domestic
Rates. The General Resource Grant to councils is being cut from £7.189m this
year to £6.971m next year and £6.809m the year after. In real terms the cut is
even larger - £6.841m and £6.564m.
In
addition, a significant amount of spending is either ring fenced or has to be
bid for like the Council Tax freeze, small business bonus, teacher numbers,
police numbers (until totally centralised), change funds etc. Ministers get to
make the ‘good news’ announcements, while councils announce the pain.
No one
disputes that the Scottish Government has to manage a difficult budget imposed
by Westminster. But within that budget there are choices to be made and
councils are clearly the losers.
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