The Scottish Government have been accused of showing "disdain" for local councils, as the leader of West Lothian' s Labour party warned there was a growing divide between local and national policies.
Lawrence Fitzpatrick, West Lothian Council’s leader, said funding cuts imposed by government was pushing council's to make tough choices, and he said he believed there had been a change in attitude toward local authorities during the life of the Scottish parliament.
He also warned that the constant squeeze on funding for councils was bad for local people and bad for the country.
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Councillor Fitzpatrick said:“ It's not healthy. We never had that before. In the past we bruised with Labour, with the Tories, and the SNP, but we always got together. Local authorities have a voice and they are powerful. The Scottish Government doesn’t like that.”
West Lothian has scored noticeable gains in the last five years in fields such as education attainment and and the improvement to the education estate - the provision of buildings and facilities.
All this has been done at a time when nationally local authorities have seen billions trimmed from budgets in the last ten years.
Councillor Fitzpatrick said: “We are running on the very cusp, just keeping services going. There’s a lack of flexibility to meet local needs. When the settlement comes in each year 60% of it is ring fenced - essentially: ‘this is how you’ll spend your money’."
Greater local say on how money is spent is crucial to going forward, and a recognition that councils should be able to make decisions, knowing that those decisions will be respected.
A councillor for the last 22 years, Mr Fitzpatrick is not hopeful.
“There was supposed to be parity of esteem between Holyrood and Scottish councils but the Scottish Government has got a disdain for councils. It’s a ‘we have superior knowledge and we don’t like you’ kind of thing.”
He cited the initial refusal of the Finance Minister Kate Forbes to meet with Cosla leaders to discuss the shortfall in this year's budget settlement. Only intervention of SNP council leaders forced a rethink, said Councillor Fitzpatrick, which added another £120m to the councils’ settlement for this year.
That means another £3.9 m coming to West Lothian, which is welcome and desperately needed, the Labour leader said.
The evidence of growing disconnect, claimed the Labour leader, can be seen in the determination to push through plans for a National Care Service to be run by a ministry within the Scottish Government.
While most agreed that there was a need for standardisation of qualifications and salaries, and the findings of the independent Feeney report, few councils see centralisation and the creation of a ministry as helpful or practical - even before you consider costs.
Planning too has been a source of contention between West Lothian and Holyrood. The council talks to communities and a landowners before drawing up a Local Development Plan. It's supposed to be a blueprint , a set of rules for how things will change in the following five years, but it is regularly ignored by housebuilders claiming the most attractive open country sites.
Councillor Fitzpatrick is equally blunt. “I think the building industry has the Scottish Government in its back pocket. There is something wrong with a system where one person, a Reporter, can overturn council decisions, and for councils to challenge that they have to find hundreds of thousands in legal fees.”
Several significant countryside developments have been green lit by the Scottish Government’s Planning Appeals Reporters, most recently homes in open countryside at Whitburn.
Councillor Fitzpatrick believes the new National Planning Framework needs to be forged into law to settle once and for all the arguments over the needs for housing. He also believes that all local councils should have a right to determine their own greenbelt land.
Long term, Councillor Fitzpatrick said bigger changes are needed to ensure younger people come into local government. The basic rate of pay for councillors remains below £20,000. He believes, in future, elected paid councillors are the way ahead as local authorities have more and more services to manage.
Councils run the basic everyday services that communities rely on from schools to bin collections to social services. Creating a full time job would mean fewer councillors - but more local accountability.
“It’s a sense of public service, a love of community”, said Councillor Fitzpatrick.
