Meeting of the Parliament 04 February 2026
In 2007, a fresh-faced finance secretary by the name of John Swinney was entrusted with delivering the SNP’s election promise of scrapping the council tax. Instead, Mr Swinney imposed a succession of council tax freezes and decimated local government funding across two decades. The result for local government and for the vital services that it provides in communities across Scotland has been ruinous. The cuts that councils of every political stripe have had to mete out are the direct result of John Swinney’s centralising instincts in slashing council budgets and ring fencing funds to tie councils’ hands. Make no mistake: the parlous state of local government finances lies squarely at the feet of John Swinney and the SNP Government.
The reality of the SNP’s chronic underfunding of local government is clear for all to see. Social care services are in crisis, teachers are moving abroad and libraries are closing. There are potholes that people can swim in and swimming pools that they cannot. Those cuts scar our communities: lives are diminished, life chances are limited and vulnerable people are put at risk. Councils are at the stage when even delivering statutory services—the most basic of services, which they have a legal duty to perform—is a stretch. Local communities are paying the price through services that have been cut or reduced or have disappeared altogether, and through eye-watering council tax rises as a result of a decade of underfunded freezes.
Things have got so bad that even SNP councillors are at last speaking out. SNP councillor and COSLA resources spokesperson Ricky Bell has said that the SNP Government’s
“very poor settlement for local government”
is making council funding
“increasingly unsustainable”
and will force councils into
“reductions in services and jobs”,
as they all struggle with cuts from their SNP colleagues here in Holyrood.
The cabinet secretary has referenced the consultation on council tax reform, which closed in January. To suggest that change is just around the corner is, frankly, for the birds. The Government has had two decades to do that.