So, following weeks and months of rebellion, argy bargy and bad blood, much of it played out in public, it would appear Scotland’s councils have at last agreed a deal with Finance Secretary John Swinney that will see their budgets slashed by a whopping £775m.
The deal may be done, then, but make no mistake, the bad blood continues. How could it be otherwise when the COSLA, the body that represents local authorities, called the agreement "draconian", and Fife’s deputy leader accused Mr Swinney of “bully boy” tactics?
The Finance Secretary, of course, has repeatedly countered that it is the UK Tory Government’s austerity agenda that has forced him to wield the axe so ferociously, while First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accuses Scottish Labour, which still controls many councils, of failing to come up with an alternative budget that could avoid such swingeing cuts.
But there is little doubt that the structure of this agreement is particularly severe. In mitigation, Mr Swinney has promised to give councils £400m to fund an accumulation of big expenses, including health and social care integration, bringing social care workers’ pay up to the Living Wage, the continuing council tax freeze, and keeping pupil/teacher ratios at SNP-promised levels.
But the devil is in the detail. Should a council refuse upfront to carry out any one of the actions, all money would be forfeited. Should they roll-back on even one part of the deal, meanwhile, the Scottish Government would be entitled to claw back all monies.
How Scotland’s 32 local authorities will implement the changes required by this deal remains to be seen, particularly with existing budget cuts and cost pressures already opening up a £1bn black hole in funding. But implement they must, for this was an offer that could not be refused. Resistance is futile. Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire, both of which are Labour run, may talk of legal action, but the basis for any case is unclear to say the least, and would take months to go through the courts. And as they battled it out, at great expense, the cuts would still have to go ahead.
So, is this a case of job done for the embattled Finance Secretary? Far from it. Indeed the human consequences of this deal, which will start to become clear in the weeks to come, are likely to make this something of a Pyrrhic victory for Mr Swinney.
Councils are already in the process of setting their budgets for the year ahead and with a worsening financial outlook, it will surely be difficult for them to avoid compulsory redundancies. Just last week, Glasgow City Council, the country’s biggest local authority, outlined plans to slash staff terms and conditions. Further cuts to the services these staff provide also seem inevitable.
With this in mind, and following an array of damaging headlines over many months, Mr Swinney must now be feeling the heat. The generally productive relationship he has enjoyed with local authorities since 2007 has been well and truly blown out of the water, and with council elections still 18 months away, there is no early reprieve in sight.
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