Council leaders seek 'urgent' talks over budgets

Councils deliver many local services including schooling and bin collections

Council leaders have called for urgent talks with Nicola Sturgeon over the Scottish government's "totally unacceptable" budget proposals.

Umbrella body Cosla said local authorities were facing a real-terms cut to their core funding of £371m.

However Scottish ministers contend that the overall package of funding for councils will actually rise next year.

Cosla president Alison Evison said council leaders had unanimously agreed that "enough is enough".

Finance Secretary Kate Forbes she was "determined that councils should be fairly funded within the limited resources we have available".

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The Scottish government's budget, set out by Ms Forbes on 9 December, is assured of passage through Holyrood as part of the cooperation agreement between the SNP and the Greens.

It will give councillors complete control over local tax rates for the first time since the SNP came to power in 2007 - although opposition parties said this put them in an "armlock" ahead of local elections in May 2022.

However there has been dispute over exactly how much money local government is to get, with the impartial Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice) saying there were "differing presentations" of the figures.

Researchers said the core local government settlement is to increase by 0.3% in cash terms from the current year, to £11.1bn - which equates to a 2.4% reduction in real terms once inflation is factored in.

However Spice noted that once cash from other portfolio areas is added in - such as funding for social care coming from the health budget, and money for free school meals - the total figure rises to £12.4bn, which would represent a real-terms increase of 4.5%.

The Scottish government circulated a breakdown of how much funding will flow to each of the 32 councils on Tuesday, and Cosla said leaders had expressed "extreme disappointment" about the "totally unacceptable" settlement in a virtual meeting that evening.

Calling for talks with the first minister, Ms Evison said: "Many in the meeting described this settlement for local government as the worst they had seen.

"Council leaders were clear last night that we could not sit back and simply accept this and there was a real strength of feeling that enough is enough.

"Not only do leaders consider that we have been given a real-terms cut of £371m, the local government settlement makes no provision for pay, inflation or increased demand for services, nor the increased burden of National Insurance contributions."

Kate Forbes said council budgets are going up once other funding is taken into account

Ms Forbes told MSPs on Tuesday that she "did not recognise" the figures being put forward by Cosla, and said it was "unfair" to draw a distinction between the core settlement and the overall package of funding in place.

She said there had been "challenging decisions" to make in the budget - which focused on channelling extra funding towards the health services, tackling child poverty and climate change measures - but insisted councils had been treated fairly.

She said: "As far as I am concerned, if you compare last year's core budget to this year's core budget, you will see protection in cash terms.

"The argument could be made that it does not take into account the impact of inflation, but I cannot inflation-proof any part of the Scottish government's budget, such is the nature of inflation right now.

"The other part to this is that there is real-terms growth to the settlement. Education and social care are joint priorities, and there is significant additional funding for health and social care integration.

"Although Cosla does not calculate that as part of its core budget, we see significant additional spend on health and social care and a significant additional spend on teachers and support staff. That also includes funding for free school meals, curriculum and music tuition charges and expanding the school clothing grant."