The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Councils to benefit from near-£500m boost in day-to-day revenue spending
Scottish Government to give more than £11.3bn to authorities next year
Funds for local council budgets were announced yesterday as part of the Scottish Government’s budget proposal.
The government will hand over more than £11.3 billion to local authorities for the next financial year, which they claim will give councils an increase in day-today revenue spending of £494 million.
Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie warned council services across Scotland would continue to buckle following the announcement, adding the settlement needed to be redone.
The government added each local authority could choose to increase council tax rates by 3%, allowing them to “top-up” how much they have to spend on council services. They added a caveat, however, that the country’s discretionary resource budget has reduced in real terms by £840m (2.8%) from 2010-11 to 2020-21 .
Angus Council will receive more than £218m from the 2020-21 revenue settlement plus an additional £2.65m if council tax is increased, for a total of £220.7m.
Dundee City Council will receive more than £317m and could raise a further £3.2m if council tax bands are put up, for a total of £321m.
Fife Council is set to get £695.9m and could raise a further £8.8m in council tax, for a total of £704.697m.
Perth and Kinross Council will get £268.371m from the settlement and have the potential to raise an extra £4.271m in council tax, bringing their total potential revenue budget funds to £272.642m.
Dundee City Council leader John Alexander warned it was still “too early to tell” what the knock-on impact will be.
“Until we fully crunch all the details, the picture won’t be clear,” he said.
“Elements of funding which relate to teachers’ pensions and IJB funding arrangements, for example, all have an impact.
“We also do not currently know how the floor calculations impact on the overall settlement.
“There is a lot of detail to work through.
“Officers will be working flat-out to analyse the budget and things should be clearer by the start of next week.”
Mr Rennie said: “This is a budget that is going to need substantial revisions.
“We need to see serious efforts to support local government, the police, mental health, nursery education and the environment.
“In particular, councils are buckling under pressure.
“The services they manage have been scraped back and back by years of underfunding and this budget doesn’t deliver a fraction of the funding they need to get things back on track.
“The budget also needs to remove any spending on work on independence at a time when we need stability and public services need as much funding as possible.”