To freeze or not to freeze that is the question

I received a call from a journalist today carrying out a survey of Council Leaders on whether or not we believe that the Council Tax freeze is sustainable.

I told her that in my opinion that was a question better directed to the Scottish Government since they control our funding. If the Government - or more specifically a majority within the Scottish Parliament - decide that maintaining the Council Tax freeze should be a higher priority that maintaining particular services, local government will have no option but to go along with this. After all, no Council is going to turn down funding to freeze the Council Tax if it comes with the same strings attached as in previous years i.e. you only receive the funding if you agree to a freeze.

Personally I think the politically astute approach for the Scottish Government to take is to allocate specific funding to Councils to allow us to freeze the tax but leave the final decision as to whether we actually do so to individual Councils. This will give Councils the greater flexibility that we have been asking for but at the same time make us directly accountable for the decisions we take.

Faced with significant reductions in our funding Councils will have to look at reducing expenditure, increasing charges for services and increasing the Council Tax. The challenge politically will be to get the balance right between these options since none of them will be popular.

If the Scottish Government decides to impose a Council Tax freeze this will limit our choices to reducing expenditure and increasing charges. While this would make life a bit simpler for Councils it would, in my opinion, fundamentally undermine local democracy.

Local government has been prepared to accept an imposed freeze in the last 3 years in return for increases in funding over all and a reduction in ring fencing. At a time of cuts in funding we should insist on our democratic right to vary local taxation.