By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 25 March 2013
Scottish local authorities today criticised the UK government’s ‘extreme and ill thought-out’ welfare reforms, warning they could have ‘a real and long-term damaging effect on the most vulnerable in society’.
Speaking before a batch of changes come into force on April 1, David O’Neill, president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, said the group could ‘not stand idly by’ and allow local government’s reputation to be hit by welfare changes that ‘are not of our doing’.
The reforms, which include the localisation of Council Tax Benefit and caps on housing benefit, including the so-called ‘bedroom tax’, were effectively transferring the ‘cost and responsibility for the needs of people on benefit to local government,’ he said.
Although it was ‘impossible’ for councils to make up the cuts being introduced, O’Neill said ‘we will do everything within our power to support the most vulnerable in our communities’.
He appealed to the Scottish people not to ‘shoot the messenger’ but raised concerns that the changes could hurt the public standing of Scotland’s 32 local authorities.
‘Make no mistake here – no blame whatsoever can be put at the door of Scotland’s councils for either introducing these measures or for the devastating impact that this legislation is about to have on our communities,’ he said.
‘Our role in this is to manage the consequences in the way that does the least possible damage to our communities and that will be a very, very difficult task.’
He also predicted the changes would put ‘even more strain on local government services that are already creaking under pressure’.
He added: ‘Indeed, councils are going to be hit themselves with the double whammy of the massive increase in people seeking our help at a time of diminishing resources.’
O’Neill added that Scottish councils had been disappointed by the approach UK government ministers had taken to the reforms.
‘We had hoped that the coalition government at Westminster were willing to work with us,’ he said. ‘We had hoped that they would be reasonable and consider how to prevent the negative impact of these changes on councils, services and most importantly on people. That seems not to be the case.’
However, a DWP spokeswoman said that the changes would ‘bring fairness back to the system’, adding that councils are being given a total of £150m to help vulnerable tenants amid the changes.
‘Giving more powers to councils will mean they can respond more clearly to local needs. We're transferring £178.2m a year of funding to local authorities and the Scottish and Welsh governments and that's in addition to administration and start-up costs of over £72m, which represents a fair settlement.’
The department added that it had consulted with the authorities and devolved administrations on funding issues and their new responsibilities to make the transfer of responsibilities as smooth as possible.
