THE question of the new tax powers for Holyrood may have dominated the election campaign so far, but the biggest issue the next parliament will face is the financial crisis in local government. The scale of the cuts and job losses to come is staggering, and yet the manifestos and campaigns have barely touched on the question of what local government should look like – or how it should be paid for.
Addressing the issue in its own manifesto, the thinktank Reform Scotland says there needs to be much greater devolution of powers to councils and even suggests pilot schemes handing control of health to local authorities. That is unlikely to happen any time soon, but there is at least a wide consensus that councils should have greater powers.
The problem is that there has been very little action and the slow erosion of councils’ financial control over the last 50 years has been accelerated by the Scottish Government’s centralising tendencies. The most obvious example is the council tax freeze which has meant local authorities no longer having control over one of their main sources of income.
There has been some movement in recent months with the announcement of the end of the freeze and modest reform of council tax. But Reform Scotland is right to express disappointment at how few proposals there are from the parties to genuinely reform local government and increase its powers and accountability.
The need for change centres on some basic issues. First, even with the proposed reforms to the banding, the council tax system remains fundamentally flawed and outdated. Second, there has been very little action on the merging or sharing of services between councils. And third, there needs to be serious discussion about the current map of 32 councils and whether that is the right number.
All of these issues have been dodged one way or another by most of the parties ahead of the election, but the next parliament will have to focus on them. The idea of a cross-party constitutional convention on local governance is a good one. But whatever happens, denial and delay are no longer possible.
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