FOR anyone wondering what Scotland’s council elections should be about, I commend the Parable of the Children’s Playparks. It is a subject which commands few headlines but actually matters to many citizens.

This week, the Local Government Benchmarking Framework, which monitors councils’ performances across Scotland, revealed that real terms expenditure on children’s playparks has dropped by a spectacular 41 per cent in the decade up to last year; with a consequential loss of amenity that every parent will have noted.

Perhaps it’s a small matter in the great scheme of things but also a sad one. Public parks are among the original “levellers-up”; public provision open to rich and poor alike, the latter category being more dependent upon it to give families the things that money cannot buy.

In a humane society remotely interested in closing the chasm that separates advantage from disadvantage, these are services which should be protected first and not last. The only way to protect them is by ensuring that the providers, our local councils, are decently funded.

Take another example. The number of librarians employed by Scotland’s councils is down by one-third since 2015. The attrition goes on. Libraries, community centres, sports centres, staffing, opening hours …. Anything discretionary is being cut, usually in silence, because councils simply do not have the money to maintain even the status quo.

That is what these elections should be about but probably won’t be – the SNP’s cynicism towards council funding and the consequential erosion of public services. It remains a matter of constant wonderment that so many who wax moral indignation about matters over which the Scottish Government has no control remain so wilfully blind to what happens on their doorsteps.

The stock defence is it must be Westminster’s fault but, in this case, it is simply not true. Research by the Scottish Parliament’s own information centre has consistently shown that funding to Scotland’s councils was cut at more than three times the rate of any inconvenience suffered by the Scottish Government itself. Even when the block grant goes up, the money for councils goes down.

It was interesting to note that the official response on children’s playparks made no attempt to dispute the 41 per cent cut over the Salmond-Sturgeon decade. Instead, they took refuge in claiming that the Scottish Government’s budget in the current year has been cut “due primarily to UK Government funding reductions”. Deflection, deflection, deflection.

That claim is based on the ridiculous pretence that special funding which the pandemic attracted should be maintained once by far the worst has passed. So is that piece of current casuistry really the best defence they can muster for a decade of cuts which have impacted so cruelly upon council services? Yes, it probably is – a deception built upon a disgrace.

Nationalism is a centralising ideology and its instinct is to close down competing centres of power. Hence the emasculation of quangos, now entirely in the hands of tame “trusties” and the fiscal treatment of local authorities which, in addition to having their money cut are prevented by ring-fencing from doing anything other than struggle to maintain existing services.

The problem is compounded by the fact that SNP-run councils, notably Glasgow, have been so willing to suffer in silence, the party being more important than the people. Per capita funding has declined by more than 20 per cent. If anyone else was in power in Edinburgh, the outrage would have been intense but for five years Ms Susan Aitken’s priority has been denial rather than defence of the city.

As the Fraser of Allander Institute recently noted: “Between 2013-14 and 2017-18, the core local government revenue settlement declined by £750 million in real terms which is equivalent to a seven per cent real terms reduction in its budget … by 2022/23, core local government funding … is slightly lower in real terms than it was in 2017/18”. 

The vast majority of that funding is “ring-fenced”, mainly for education and social care. Fraser of Allander noted that over the past five years: “If anything, things are moving towards less not more local autonomy”. The same trend continues with plans for a national social care agency, described by COSLA as “a direct attack on localism and on the rights of people to make, and benefit from, decisions taken locally”.

For years, there was a ritual in which the Greens were given the role of protesters after another brutal council funding allocation was announced to MSPs. The severity of cut was then reduced – but was still a cut, and so it went on, the price paid in filthy streets, pot-holed roads, and all the other service reductions.

This time round, the Greens were inside the Sturgeon tent so the ritual had to be varied. All 32 council leaders in Scotland – even Ms Aitken – signed a letter of protest. COSLA declared: “Not only do leaders consider that we have been given a real-terms cut of £371 million, the settlement makes no provision for pay inflation or increased demand for services, nor for the increased burden of National Insurance contributions.”

So £100 million was found from somewhere to give the appearance of compromise. Yet again, the actual result will be cuts to every budget where discretion exists. Jobs will go. Services will decline and the least well-off will pay the price while our great patriots count on councils, or better still Westminster, getting the blame, insofar as anyone still cares enough to protest.

Ms Sturgeon’s campaign seems to be based on “sending a message to Boris Johnson” about parties in Downing Street, which seems an odd way for a government with total responsibility for council funding to defend itself after 15 years in office. Is it Utopian to hope that enough people still care about local government as a force for good to send a different message on May 5th?

Send a message on behalf of the children who would love to use playparks if the swings weren’t broken and the ground scattered with rubbish. Send a message on behalf of the librarians and those, young and old, who valued their past services. Send a message on behalf of those throughout Scotland who have fought to instil civic pride but now see it as a losing battle.

And in sending these messages, make sure you get the right address.

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