Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2018
Renfrewshire Council, like many councils—all of them, in fact—is setting priorities and making decisions. At the same time, it is investing more in roads and the environment and is expanding its services, as are many other councils. There are choices for local authorities. Renfrewshire Council is committed to having no compulsory redundancies—that is an example of a council making choices. My argument to Mr Kelly would be that local authorities are well resourced as a consequence of the budget and that the above-inflation uplift was good news for local government across the land.
I had begun to discuss a range of elements of the package. It includes financial support of £24 million to cover the full-year cost of the teachers’ pay award for 2017-18; £120 million for pupil equity funding, to be spent at the discretion of head teachers to raise attainment and close the attainment gap; £88 million to maintain the pupil-teacher ratio nationally at 2016 levels; and a £355 million transfer from the national health service to integration authorities in support of health and social care, which has been baselined.
In addition, local authorities will be able to increase council tax by up to 3 per cent, and they look set to do so. That is worth an additional £77 million to Scotland’s local authorities. Thirty local authorities have set their council tax levels for next year and the remainder are to do so this week. All of that represents a real-terms increase for local government.
There remains a further £47.6 million of revenue funding that will be distributed once the necessary information becomes available. It will be included for approval in the 2019 order. The amounts involved, as agreed with local government, are £37.6 million for the teachers induction scheme and £10 million, which will be the balance of the total sum available to ensure that the impact of the bedroom tax can be fully mitigated.
In addition to the revenue funding that is contained in today’s order, there is specific revenue funding that is paid directly by the relevant policy areas under separate legislation, which amounts to £273.7 million. That includes pupil equity funding, £86.5 million for criminal justice social work, £52.2 million for early years expansion, additional support for northern isles ferries and £4.4 million for Gaelic funding.
The 2018 order also seeks approval for changes to funding allocations of £148.6 million for 2017-18, which have been added to fund a number of agreed spending commitments. Those include £42.3 million for the council tax reduction scheme, £37.5 million to support the teacher induction scheme and £22.5 million for temporary accommodation.
There is a strong increase for capital funding as well, primarily supporting the Government’s efforts on early learning and childcare. There are also further investments, which have been debated previously, to meet our ambitious housing targets.
I argue that our business rates package is the most generous in the United Kingdom and that our specific measures support growth. The business community has warmly welcomed our decision to cap the uplift at the level of the consumer prices index rather than at that of the retail prices index.
In summary, the total funding from the Scottish Government to local government next year amounts to £10.7 billion. Our funding proposals continue to deliver a fair financial settlement for our partners in local government that will be strengthened by continued joint working to improve outcomes for local people by improving educational attainment and through health and social care integration.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2018 [draft] be approved.
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