IT may be six years since the international banking crisis hit and two years since Britain was in recession, but the chill wind of austerity is biting deep again and the cold snap is set to last a few more years yet.

Scotland's local authorities are in the front line of spending cuts and it appears the savings required of them will have an impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Scots.

Falkirk is the latest council to warn of service cuts, this time to make up a shortfall of £40 million in three years. The council is having to consider very difficult choices, namely: charging or charging more for some services, reducing others and axing some services altogether. There is only so far that "efficiency savings" and asset sales can take you.

Those who suffer the most from local authority spending cuts tend to be those who have the least and rely more as a consequence on public services such as funded transport, free day centre services, meals on wheels or subsidised sport.

But what else can councils do, especially faced with a continuing council tax freeze? The extent to which the local government spending squeeze will affect people across Scotland is becoming all too clear.

In Falkirk there is the prospect of teacher numbers being cut, adding to widespread alarm about just how far council cuts could have impact on schools. Other proposals include charging older people for day care.

South Lanarkshire was in the firing line yesterday after revealing plans to increase class sizes and cut teacher numbers to make £40m of savings in the next two years; other proposals under consideration include the closure of a library and axing subsidised transport for voluntary organisations, such as disability groups.

That will have sounded familiar in East Renfrewshire where councillors have to save £20m in two years. Proposals include using senior pupils to staff school libraries in order to make all school librarians part-time.

In Glasgow, meanwhile, £100m must be saved over three years. The Glasgow Association for Mental Health (GAMH) is facing a 40 per cent funding cut, putting it at serious risk of closure. Highland Council could shed 1,000 jobs to save £64m over five years, Renfrewshire faces £30m of cuts in four years and West Lothian Council has to find £30m.

Leaving aside the financial graphs and forecasts, what this means in human terms is the anxiety of redundancy for hundreds, yet more pressure on the small incomes for some service users and, for others, the end of services they had relied on.

It was always known the Scottish Government had deferred further deep cutbacks until after the referendum, but with the full force of those cuts hitting hard, angry words aimed at George Osborne, however justified they may be, are not enough.

There is no easy solution, but easing the council tax freeze, which benefits the better off more than the poor, and taking on the difficult task of reforming local government finance to make it fairer, must now be high on the new First Minister's to-do list.