Chamber and committees

We are not complacent but, to look behind and underneath examples of English local authorities going bust, some related to ropey investment decisions that were made without due scrutiny or oversight. The construct of the ability of English local authorities to do that is a bit different from the situation for Scottish local authorities.

There is a debate about the general power of competence. There is also a debate about giving local government more fiscal powers, as we want to do. All of that has to be done within a prudent framework, because we have to make sure that we work under the same requirements.

Although no limits are set by the Scottish or UK Governments on the amount that a Scottish council can borrow, a council is under a statutory duty

“to determine and keep under review the maximum amount which it can afford to allocate to capital expenditure.”

It has to be able to pay for what it borrows, and it has to have regard to the CIPFA prudential code. There are requirements. Councils are also required, before the beginning of each financial year, to set authorised borrowing limits for a three-year period. There is a level of scrutiny, including through the Accounts Commission, Audit Scotland and so on.

The short answer is that I feel that we have a more prudent set of frameworks, which will prevent some of the more extreme cases that we saw down south. However, we must be vigilant, and we continue to work with local government on getting the right balance between meeting aspirations for fiscal powers and ensuring that that is done within a prudent framework.

I am not aware of that ever having happened, but I would like to think that we would get intel that there was an emerging problem before it did. I would also like to think that the lines of communication are short enough between the Scottish Government and local government to prevent such situations. That is perhaps a bit different from the situation down south. The size and scale of government there might mean that the lines of communication are not as short.

I think that, if a problem was beginning to emerge, we would be well aware of it prior to the point of having to step in. I mentioned the Accounts Commission. It might highlight to us concerns about the financial position of a particular local authority. I think that the issues would be brought out at an early enough stage to do something about it. However, you would then have to deal with what that something would be. There is the funding formula for local government, which is basically an agreement among 32 local authorities. Touch wood, we have not had a council on the verge of bankruptcy. We would want to ensure that we work to avoid that, through the prudential framework and the work of the Accounts Commission.

Let me first recognise that a large chunk of the reserves are committed. I am not going to disagree with that point of principle.

I have a couple of observations. The reserve balances are not equally spread. Some local authorities have hardly any reserves, while others have quite significant reserves. There is a range of reasons for that, a lot of which are Covid related. You will notice that the reserve balances are considerably higher than the pre-pandemic levels, because of the additional funding that went through local government during Covid. Again, it is a point of principle that decisions on the use of reserves are the responsibility of councils, and they should use those where it is prudent and sustainable to do so.

However, the other point that I would make is that this is all public money. We all have an interest in ensuring that public money is utilised in the best way. Some local authorities are using their reserves to drive reform and to change the way services are delivered, and that sometimes requires investment. We understand all of that.

Reserves are part of the picture, and we would want and encourage local authorities to deploy reserves in a way that is prudent and responsible and that makes the best use of public money.

Yes—it is quite hard to navigate. The more transparency there is, the better, when councils are announcing what they are going to do, whether that is transforming a service or implementing a project. Bringing everything to the fore would probably be helpful.

Those questions are all in budget territory. I stress that the negotiation with local government is about a package, so I do not want to pre-empt some of the discussions. There will be trade-offs and compromise here and there around what the final landing spot looks like. The council tax is just one element, so it would only be fair to keep that in the budget negotiation space.

That is what I have been alluding to. I raised that issue at the FISC meeting—a lot of issues were raised, and that was another one. Again, everybody was saying the same thing: we need investment in public services, so we need certainty and stability around our resource budgets, and we absolutely need to not cut capital, because it is investment in infrastructure that will help to grow the economy and deliver the infrastructure that we need. As I think you said earlier, that is about day-to-day maintenance as well as big projects, but it is hard to do all of that with reducing capital budgets. We all made the same point at the FISC meeting. We did not get any confirmation one way or the other, but we have landed the message, and I think that others are doing likewise.

I stand corrected—3,000. Clearly, we need to get those turned around. What is the issue? Is it a personnel issue? I know that there was a Covid lag and a load of work was stuck because the repairs could not be done. Are we through that lag yet, or is it still having an impact? Is it a capital issue? What are the blockers? How can we help to move through that situation? If you extrapolate the 3,000 Edinburgh voids to the whole of Scotland, that is a rich seam. We could turn the situation around. There are also acquisitions and the repurposing of empty buildings, which some local authorities have been really good at doing.

We just need to get a bit of pace on all that. It is not one solution. Capital and revenue come to bear here. I stress again that I am really keen to find solutions that can help move some of that through a bit more quickly.

The visitor levy is a local levy that councils can choose to deploy or not to deploy. We are either in agreement that councils should have fiscal powers—given their desire for more fiscal autonomy and flexibility to grow the quantum that they have at their disposal—or we are not.

I will bring Jennie Barugh in.

We will look at that as part of our budget, in terms of the best landing space for us. Obviously, there is a material issue in relation to which year the block grant adjustment is applied to.

No.