The scale of savings required to be achieved by councils is so daunting it starts to raise questions about whether they can continue in their current form.

Facing the need for huge budgetary savings this year, and with more of the same expected between 2016 and 2018, local authorities would argue they have already pared non-essential services to the bone.

The cuts to come - and they are substantial - can only come from more essential areas.

Edinburgh City Council is the latest to clarify some of its plans, announcing it will eliminate 1200 posts, while making savings by encouraging citizens to interact online rather than face-to-face.

Senior officials have compared the move to the rise of self-service checkouts in supermarkets. The supermarket comparison may seem crass but it makes sense for councils to look at ways of doing what they do more cheaply and efficiently.

It is obviously good news for employees that the council is hoping to achieve the reduction in posts through natural wastage and by redeploying workers. But these jobs will still be lost to the local economy.

The context for Edinburgh is a £67m budget shortfall spanning three years. The city along with Glasgow and Aberdeen faces a combined deficit, this financial year alone, of more than £150m. Dundee City Council has said it must save £30m over the next three years. West Lothian has said the same.

This is a drastic and challenging agenda. It may resurrect suggestions that there are too many councils, or that there should be more sharing of services to reduce costs. However sharing of services involves investment and a culture change which will take time even if the will is there. In any case such changes are highly unlikely to deliver the requisite savings. The Scottish Government has ruled out local government reorganisation within the current parliament.

So there is little sign of any overarching strategic thinking from councils or central government on how to manage the inevitable service reductions, even as education authorities look at cutting the length of the school day or staffing school libraries with pupils.

Council insiders admit that much of the response is still fire-fighting, without a vision of how local government may have to change.

Yet local councils are responsible for delivering major areas of government policy such as class sizes and free school meals for primary 1-3s. They are also responsible for a lot of the services people care about - such as roads, education and housing.

Some of these, particularly social work and schools, have been protected in many councils. That will no longer be possible and the public may begin to see the effects of austerity as never before and in ways that affect them more directly than previously.

The Scottish Government is sitting on a £444m underspend while local government colleagues are faced with impossible choices. National politicians must make clear how they see the future of local government. Local accountability remains important, but there are practical costs to having all councils, whatever the size, delivering uniform services.

On the principle that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, as the cuts bite, the role of local government could become apparent to the public as never before.

Scotland's political leaders must make it clear what approach they believe should be taken to balancing the books.