By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 31 March 2014
The leader of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has told Public Finance of his determination to fight to stop the organisation blowing itself apart, after seven of the 32 councils served notice of their intention to quit next year.
But David O’Neill, Cosla president, admitted some members could be lost. Concerns are understood to focus on Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest council, which suspended its membership for several years in the early 2000s.
‘We will be working extremely hard, and we are confident that we will be able to retain a fair number of them in membership,’ O’Neill told PF.
‘It would be a shame if we lost one or two, but Cosla will continue to do national pay deals. The work that Cosla does is absolutely vital. It cannot be done by small organisations or by 32 councils acting on their own.’
The row centres on the formula for distributing Scottish Government funding and Cosla’s own decision-making processes – two issues that have become increasingly conflated.
Both are lent momentum by tensions between Labour and the Scottish National Party, which drives much of Scottish politics at present. All the councils threatening to quit are Labour-led and, while all have reserved the right to withdraw their threats, the Cosla leadership is taking the possibility of a meltdown seriously.
The spark for the dispute is Scottish Government funding for councils in 2015/16. The finance secretary takes Cosla’s advice on how the money should be distributed. Traditionally, a needs-base formula has been used, but for 2015/16, Cosla leaders opted for a ‘flat uprate’ deal.
While willing to accept Cosla’s decision, Finance Secretary John Swinney has published tables contrasting the effect of the two options for individual councils, revealing differences of more than 2% for some authorities.
The other issue is whether such decisions should be taken, as at present, by the so-called Leaders Group within Cosla, or by a larger representative body, the Convention. A constitutional review, due to report in June, is expected to recommend a shift in favour of the Convention. This is seen as reducing Labour’s strategic influence within a politically divided Cosla.
O’Neill told PF that he expected the distribution issue to be revisited at the end of April by the Leaders Group, and appeared to hint at a change of heart in favour of updating the needs indicators.
‘John Swinney’s decision to publish the tables means councils now know on an individual basis what it would mean, so the idea of voting for it simply on principle no longer exists,’ he said. ‘What has taken people by surprise this time is the size of the variation. Nobody expected that it was going to be as large as this.’
Asked whether he regretted Swinney’s actions, he replied: ‘We are where we are.’ Both options for distributing the money were equally legitimate, he said.
O’Neill defended the constitutional review. ‘Our constitution is out of date and some things need to be altered. For example, you can only speak once in a discussion. In an organisation that is all about debating issues, that frankly is daft.’
O’Neill, a former Labour leader in North Ayrshire, made clear his determination to head off a split. ‘There are 32 councils in Scotland and currently 32 of them are members of Cosla. Losing even one of them would be a serious blow, because it’s important that Cosla is able to speak up on behalf of all of Scottish local government, not just part of it.’
