COUNCILS are set to back down in their stand-off with John Swinney over budget cuts, after a bitter row that has left relations between central and local government in tatters.

The local authority umbrella group Cosla yesterday said it expected council leaders would reluctantly accept the deal from the Finance Secretary before Tuesday’s deadline.

Council leaders last week rejected the government’s “unacceptable” settlement for 2016-17, furious at the proposed £350m cut to local government’s £10bn budget.

However Cosla Vice-President Michael Cook told the Sunday Herald that council leaders would now have to take the deal because the alternative was far worse.

After some councils floated breaking the council tax freeze to raise extra funds, Swinney threatened to impose multiple sanctions on any authority that defied him.

Cook, an Independent on Scottish Borders Council, said the sanctions were so “eye watering”, a potential £408m on top of £350m of cuts, that councils couldn’t risk incurring them.

“They’re simply not going to inflict that level of damage and hurt on people,” he said,

“My expectation is that many councils will consider themselves obliged to come to terms.

“For all sorts of practical reasons, leaders are likely to be saying, ‘Yes, we will freeze the council tax’ but I think many of them will say they’re doing this under duress.”

However Cook warned that some councils run by minority administrations could fail to pass their budgets if opposition parties out-voted them.

Glasgow and three other councils outside Cosla are also expected to strike a deal.

Cook said this year’s budget process had led to a “major fall-out” with the government, and accused ministers of hypocrisy for strong-arming councils in negotiations, while complaining about unfair treatment by the Treasury in talks over new powers for Holyrood.

“It’s a massive frustration, how we’ve got here.They [the Scottish government] did not do all they could to mitigate the cuts. The assertions about it being Westminster austerity are totally bogus. They have chosen to approach the budget in this way.

“If you have any parity of esteem, you do not say, ‘If you don’t do what we tell you, we’re going to inflict this kind of damage on the people you’re accountable to.’ That’s not how you behave.

“I think it’s pretty hypocritical of them.

“If Westminster came along and said, ‘Here’s what you’re getting, like it or lump it. And if you dinnae agree, we’re going to impose a deal with a whole lot of sanctions that cut across the democratic view of the Scottish cabinet’, you can imagine what the response to that would be.”

He said it was in the interest of both local and central government to have a good relationship.

“That has come under enormous strain. There’s clearly huge disagreement about this.

“We are having a major fall-out in relation to how this business should be done.

“We don’t think you should do it by threatening people and inflicting eye-watering sanctions on them to the extent that you completely curtail their democratic choice.

“It will take some serious trust and a hell of a lot of work to rebuild some of those bridges.

“There needs to be some seriousness of intent on the part of central government, and recent experience has been very poor in that regard.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We have been committed to ensuring a positive, collaborative relationship with Cosla and engaged in open discussions on what is a challenging but fair settlement for local government in Scotland, indeed extending the deadline for response in order to allow local authorities to fully examine the proposal.

“We recognise the pressures on budgets across the whole of the public sector, and in households throughout Scotland, which is why it is important to maintain the Council Tax freeze while we consider ways to replace it - as well as reimbursing local authorities to ensure they can continue to provide essential services.”