Edinburgh City Council has become the latest Scottish local authority to warn it will be forced to keep cutting jobs unless it is allowed to increase the council tax.
There is little doubt local authorities have felt the squeeze over the last few years, as they faced a double whammy from two parliaments: the SNP’s flagship council tax freeze on one hand and Westminster’s biting austerity cuts on the other.
It is the biggest authorities that struggle most. The capital had already announced 2,000 job cuts in an attempt to save £126m by 2019 when it hinted at more yesterday, while earlier this week North Lanarkshire outlined plans to slash more than 1,000 posts over the next two years. Glasgow City Council, meanwhile, recently said it would have to cut 3,000 jobs.
Let’s not forget, job cuts might satisfy bean-counters but they are also likely to result in reductions to the educational, social and environmental services we all rely on. They cannot be divorced from our communities
At the same time, however, the council tax freeze has been a massively popular policy for the Scottish Government since its introduction in 2008.
So where do we go from here? Well, for a start, it’s time for the freeze to end. Voters are not stupid; they reluctantly understand the correlation between the tax they pay and the services they receive.
Councils must be given more freedom and flexibility to set their budgets at levels that are realistic to the services they want to provide. Put bluntly, the council tax will have to go up.
In return, councils should be expected to work smarter and more efficiently. Despite endless promises about neighbouring councils in the east and west of Scotland sharing services such as human resources and information technology, little progress has been made.
Meanwhile, the cross-party commission charged with examining alternatives to the council tax - which even supporters admit is outdated – is due to report in the coming weeks. It’s about time - plans to overhaul local taxation and make it fairer were included in the SNP’s 2016 manifesto.
Now is the time for the Scottish Government to grasp this particular nettle and dare to be bold; our public services can’t afford anything less.
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