Scotland's 32 councils have cut jobs by 12 per cent since 2008.

This alone has cost them £352 million in severance payments and sundries. More reductions, thousands of them, are on the way while authorities struggle to cope with an 8.5 per cent real terms loss in Scottish Government funding inflicted between 2010/11 and 2013/14. More of that, a lot more, also seems inevitable.

The Accounts Commission concedes that councils have coped well in the circumstances. There is also an implicit admission that Scottish authorities have been better protected, relatively speaking, than their counterparts in England, whose real terms funding will have fallen - collapsed would be a better word - by 37 per cent in the years between 2010/11 and 2015/16. This is scant comfort.

In Scotland, gaps are appearing and pressures are increasing. Endless job cuts are not, says the commission, "sustainable". The council tax is capped; reserves can be used once only; the demands of education and social work - 30 per cent and 22 per cent of spending respectively - continue to increase. Councils can go on improving efficiency and increasing their charges, where possible, but these stratagems have limits.

The population is changing, growing and ageing. Health and social care integration, planned for completion in April 2016, is a huge challenge. Meanwhile, there are the consequences of welfare reform, of pension scheme changes, and of mounting bills for decades ahead from PFI and non-profit distributing schemes.

Then there are binding Scottish Government policies. Whatever their merits, primary class size targets, personal care for the elderly, the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, and the council tax freeze are not cost-free commitments. They require management and money. An increasing number of councils cannot see where the money will be found in future.

The Accounts Commission leaves politics to others. Instead it recommends all kinds of good practice and planning. Its report observes, nevertheless, that what lies ahead if austerity continues will be without precedent. Local government derives better than 80 per cent of its income from the Scottish Government. That, for now, depends on a block grant that is shrinking.

Work is going ahead to find agreement on a replacement for the council tax. Whether that provides relief from a charge that has not been increased since 2007 remains to be seen. Local authorities, with a legal duty to balance budgets, are locked in a politically-inspired freeze.

Parties of government could, but will not, return to the issue of revaluation. As matters stand, assessors are working with council tax bands tied, ludicrously, to the estimated "open market value" of properties on April 1, 1991. The fact is symbolic of a decayed system, but since the parties have no appetite for reform, local government is trapped.

What can be done in the here and now? A full-scale reorganisation, reducing the number of authorities, could cut costs in the long-term, but it would be expensive to implement amid austerity. The meaning of "local" could also be lost.

That said, nothing hinders councils from sharing resources, expertise and burdens. Education and social work are in essence national, with little room for local discretion. Administrative functions might be better combined if protections were in place. It would not solve every problem in hard times, but it would be a start.