By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 28 November 2012
Finance Secretary John Swinney has announced a £9.9bn funding settlement for Scotland’s 32 local authorities in 2013/14.
The total is some £1.6bn lower than in the current year, reflecting the transfer of police and fire and rescue functions to new national services.Swinney said that, once this adjustment was taken into account, the settlement provided an extra £35.2m for ‘new and extended service delivery’, though this was contingent on councils accepting both the continuation of the council tax freeze and a new deal on maintaining teacher numbers.
‘This funding settlement delivers for local authorities and communities across Scotland,’ he claimed yesterday.
Swinney also announced that he was postponing a revaluation of business rates until 2017, disappointing business leaders. They believe they have been operating at a competitive disadvantage because the last revaluation, in 2008, took place in a booming market.
Andy Willox, Scottish policy convener of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the decision would leave valuations ‘dangerously out of date’, while Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said Scottish businesses had lacked the protection of the transitional relief offered in England.
Swinney announced a three-month consultation aimed at agreeing ‘a more user-friendly and transparent’ rates regime. He said: ‘Before 2007 the poundage rate in Scotland was set higher than that of the rest of the UK putting Scottish business at a competitive disadvantage. That is a danger that must be avoided.’
